PORTRAITURE 

OF 

MODERN SCEPTICISM; 

OR, 

A CAVEAT AGAINST INFIDELITY: 

INCLUDING 

A BRIEF STATEMENT OF 
THE EVIDENCES OF REVEALED TRUTH, 
AND A DEFENCE OF THE CANON AND OF INSPIRATION. 

INTENDED ASA PRESENT FOR THE YOUNG. 



BY JOHN MORISON, D.D., 

AUTHOR OF " AN EXPOSITION OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS," ETC. 



" The Bible is indeed amongst books, what the diamond 
is among precious stones."— Robert Boyle. 



LONDON: 

FREDERICK WESTLEY AND A. H. DAVIS, 

ST A TIONERs'- HALL-COURT. 




M DCCC XXX IT 



Marjette and Savill, Printers, 
St« Martin's Lane. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



Preface v 

PART I. 

A PORTRAITURE OF MODERN SCEPTICISM. 
Introductory Remarks •. 1 

Chap. I. The views of Sceptics respecting the 

moral character of God 13 

II. Infidels profess to hold the doctrine of 

the Divine Existence, but neglect all 
religious worship 18 

III. A brief survey of the character of that 

morality which Infidelity inculcates 

and displays 23 

IV. The practical effects of Infidelity 29 

V. A contrasted view of Infidelity and 

Christianity 33 

VI. An affectionate appeal to those who have 

been entangled in the snares of Infi- 
delity 41 



PART II. 

THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 



Chap. I. The comparative credit due to the con- 
clusions of Sceptics and Christians ... 49 



iv 



CONTENTS, 



PACK 

Chap. II. The Evidence of Christianity admits of 
being brought home individually, with 
convincing power, to every man's heart 60 

— III. A brief survey of those branches of evi- 

dence which it is proper to urge upon 
the attention of those who have not as 
yet yielded up their minds to the 
divine authority of the gospel 69 

section first. 

The Internal Evidence of Chris- 
tianity 70 

1 . The moral character of its great Founder 7 1 

2. The sublimity of its diction 79 

3. The high standard of its morality 85 

4. The coincidence of Christianity with 

the character of God and the actual 
condition of man 100 

section second. 

The External Evidence of Chris- 
tianity 113 

1. Miracles 114 

2. The Resurrection of Christ 145 

3. Prophecy 158 

4. The early success of Christianity 178 

5. The moral and social benefits conferred 

on mankind by Christianity 197 

Chap. IV. On the uncorrupted transmission of the 

Sacred Books 210 

— V. On the Inspiration of the Holy Scrip- 

tures 225 

— VI. Popular objections to the full Inspira- 

tion of the Holy Scriptures 253 

Conclusion j 261 



PREFACE. 



As the forms of infidelity are constantly chang- 
ing, it becomes the duty of all good men to 
watch its versatile movements, and to endeavour, 
according to their several abilities, to counteract 
its subtle and pernicious influence. Standing, 
as we now do, in the full blaze of secular know- 
ledge, there is the utmost danger, through the 
depravity of our fallen nature, of our preferring 
the wisdom of man to the wisdom of God ; and 
if the advocates of revealed truth do not rush 
into the field of conflict with the enemies of 
human happiness, there is reason to fear that 
scepticism will obtain a partial and momentary 
triumph : — I say partial and momentary, for the 



vi 



PREFACE. 



truth of Heaven must ultimately prevail, and 
every power that would silence the voice of 
" the living oracles" must at last be crushed 
by the omnipotent energy of the Son of God. 
I am not afraid for the ark of the Lord ; but I 
regard it as a solemn duty to contribute my aid, 
however humble, to the defence of revealed truth ; 
and particularly to make my appeal to that por- 
tion of my fellow men who, either from mental 
tendency, or association in life, are peculiarly 
exposed to the desolating and pernicious onset of 
sceptical opinions. 

I am aware there is nothing novel or peculiar 
in the treatise which I now place on the altar of 
the public ; but I am fully satisfied that the 
position I have taken is sure, and that the stern- 
est or the most insidious infidelity has no honest 
argument to oppose to the conclusions I have 
ventured, with unhesitating confidence, to draw. 
I have written with the decision which becomes 
him who feels he has truth, and the truth of 



PREFACE. 



vii 



Heaven, on his side ; and I beseech no man, who 
deigns to examine what I have said, to indulge a 
sneer, while conscience tells him that he should 
offer up a prayer to " the Father of lights" for 
wisdom to guide his devious course, and, above 
all, to rectify his wayward and erring heart. 

If there be any thing requiring distinct specifi- 
cation in the plan of the following work, it is the 
order pursued in laying down the series of evi- 
dence in support of the claims of Revelation. 
Whether right or wrong, I have wrought my 
way from the interior to the outworks ; and have 
made my first attack on the citadel of the heart, 
by endeavouring to point out the adaptations of 
Christianity to the known and admitted condition 
of human nature. In doing so, I flatter myself 
that 1 have pursued a simpler and more natural 
course than those writers upon the same impor- 
tant subject who have placed an almost exclusive 
dependence upon external evidence. At the 
same time, I have not dared to overlook any 



viii 



PREFACE, 



part of that proof which shews the Bible to be 
the word of God. 

In the views I have ventured to express, in 
reference to the momentous subject of Inspiration, 
I am fully aware that I have exposed myself to 
the criticisms of some of my friends, eminent 
for their piety and biblical erudition. But this 
I cannot help. I have gone where truth led me ; 
and I verily believe, in the fullest sense, that the 
Scriptures are — The word of God. Should any 
respectable individual, giving his name, do me 
the honour to controvert my views of verbal 
inspiration, I shall, if spared, endeavour to reply 
to his animadversions. But I will not allow 
myself to be dragged into the field of contro- 
versy by any one who treats this awful subject 
with irreverence. May all my readers be taught 
of God ! 



PART FIRST. 



A PORTRAITURE OF MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 

" There is no fear of God before their 
eyes:"* — Such is the concluding sentence of a 
description which strips fallen humanity of all its 
boasted excellence ; which shews, by a most con- 
vincing train of reasoning, that Jews and Gentiles 
are alike guilty before God ; and which pictures, 
in vivid colours, the awful depravity into which 
men sink without the intervention and the vital 
reception of the Gospel of peace. As the whole 
race are involved in one common apostacy, 
there is only one remedy that meets their case, 
and that remedy is Christianity. Wherever 
this divine catholicon is embraced, it ultimately 

* Romans, iii. 18. 

B 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



effects the cure of man's moral distempers; it 
purifies his conscience from guilt, by an applica- 
tion of " the blood of sprinkling it purifies his 
heart by the operation of a living faith ; and it 
purines his life by the all-subduing influence 
of motives which animate him with the love of 
God, and with the quenchless desire of being 
conformed to his moral image. Wherever 
Christianity is rejected, man remains the victim 
of apostacy, the child of wrath, the sport of evil 
passions, and, in the truest sense, " without God, 
and without hope in the world."* Whether we 
survey a state of pure heathenism, f or contem- 
plate a condition of society in which Christianity 
is rejected as a fable, we behold, in either case, 
a soil fertile in every species of wickedness 
that can insult the divine Majesty, or that can 
degrade and brutalize the human race. Could 
we conceive of a community wholly made up of 
men denying Revelation, and wholly imbued 

* Eph. ii. 12. 
f It may be fairly questioned, from the practices of all 
pagan countries, whether there be any people in a state of 
pure heathenism. Tradition seems every where to have 
spread some faint glimmerings of celestial light. 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 3 

with the principles and feelings of modern 
deism, we should have presented before our 
minds a scene of moral turpitude and guilt, too 
fearful to admit of minute examination. In 
such a community, we should see every social 
tie dissolved, every virtuous obligation trampled 
upon, and all the savage passions of the human 
heart brought into resistless and destructive play. 
In the creed of an infidel there is nothing what- 
ever to deter him from the basest actions, pro- 
vided he can screen himself from the eye of 
public justice, and from the scorn and derision of 
his fellow men. He is a man altogether without 
principle, who denies the legitimate distinc- 
tion between virtue and vice, who resolves all 
human motive into a principle of self-love, and 
who is an equal foe to the laws of Heaven, 
and to the wise and benevolent institutions of 
men. A powerful writer, and an acute observer 
of mankind, has said, that " modern unbelievers 
are Deists in theory, Pagans in inclination, and 
Atheists in practice."* They profess, indeed, to 
believe in one supreme and uncreated Intelli- 

* Rev. Andrew Fuller. See his Works, vol. i. page 17. 



4 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



gence, infinitely benevolent, and infinitely holy ; 
but they neither cultivate his benevolence, nor 
imitate his purity; and as it respects prayer, 
and praise, and the homage of devout worship, 
they are as scornfully neglectful of them as if 
there were no God, and are practically in that 
state of total irreligion, which shews that verily 
"There is no fear of God before their eyes." 
Though they talk loudly of one God, and pro- 
fess to pay him homage in the temple of nature, 
it is most clear that in escaping from the folly and 
absurdity of the "gods many and lords many''* 
of the heathen, they have plunged themselves 
into a state of reckless scepticism and doubt, 
which leaves every perfection of the Deity un- 
defined, which utterly extinguishes his moral 
government, and which renders even the belief 
of his very existence a powerless and unin- 
fluential admission. 

By the aid of Revelation, indeed, they have 
wrought their way out of the Pantheon; but, 
standing in the full blaze of celestial discovery, 
they have set themselves to blaspheme " the 

* 1 Cor. viii. 5. 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



5 



only living and true God."* Ungrateful return 
for that light which the God of mercy has shed 
upon their path, and which was never surely 
intended to heighten their guilt, or to accelerate 
their condemnation ! 

What, then, are we to understand by modem 
infidelity ? Xot surely that infidelity is a new 
thing ; for since man lost the image of his God, 
he has, in all the periods of his eventful history, 
evinced a tendency to discredit his Maker, and 
even " when he knew him, not to glorify him as 
God."f To provide, in some degree, against 
this tendency, and to preserve the successive 
revelations of Heaven from being utterly lost, 
the Most High selected one family as the depo- 
sitaries of his truth, and as the ministers of his 
mercy to the rest of mankind. 

It would be easy to shew, by an induction 
of facts, that it was infidelity, in days of old, 
which paved the way for the abominations of 
polytheism. Men first discredited and opposed 
the true oracles of Heaven, and then they set 



* Jer. x. 10. t Rom. i. 21. 

B 2 



8 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



themselves to serve God in their own way, and 
to prescribe a religion and a worship for them- 
selves ; and because " they did not like to retain 
God in their knowledge, God gave them over to 
a reprobate mind, to do those things which are 
not convenient ; being filled with all unrighteous- 
ness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, ma- 
liciousness ; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, 
malignity ; whisperers, back-biters, haters of 
God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of 
evil things, disobedient to parents ; without un- 
derstanding, covenant breakers, without natural 
affection, implacable, unmerciful; who knowing 
the judgment of God, that they which commit 
such things are worthy of death, not only do the 
same, but have pleasure in them that do them."* 
It was such infidelity as this, my esteemed 
reader, which prepared the minds of mankind 
for all the grossness and all the absurdity of 
heathenism ; it was such infidelity as this which 
obtained in Philistia, and Egypt, and Canaan ; 
it was such infidelity as this which called forth 



* Rom. i. 28—32. 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



7 



the stupendous energy of Omnipotence, in con- 
founding and terrifying those evil powers who 
contemned the name of Israel's God, and op- 
pressed the chosen tribes ; yea, it was such 
infidelity as this which prompted all the ido- 
latries of the ancient church, who no sooner 
forgot the Lord their God, than they set them- 
selves to worship the gods of the nations among 
whom they sojourned. 

Infidelity is no new thing. It is a plant indi- 
genous to the sinful heart of man ; it has sprung 
up in every age ; it has more or less prevailed 
in every nation under the whole face of heaven; 
it is the palpable exhibition of that secret and 
deep-rooted unbelief which is unwilling to ac- 
credit any communication as divine that does 
not picture the Most High as a being altogether 
answering to the sinful imaginings of a depraved 
and apostate heart. 

By modern infidelity, then, we are simply to 
understand those new forms, and that new 
energy which scepticism has put on, in modem 
times, and more particularly since the era of the 
French revolution ; by which it has mightily 
diffused itself among all ranks of society, and has 



8 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 

produced a class of writers capable of making 
their appeal to each separate branch of the com- 
munity. It is modern y because those who are 
yet in middle life can remember the baneful 
period when it began to exert its giant strength, 
and when, with a fiend-like daring, it aimed a 
deadly blow at the thrones of monarchs and at 
the altars of religion. We can remember all 
this, and we can trace in the bloody and impure 
and ruthless steps of infidelity, the hateful cha- 
racter which belongs to it. It is modem, for it 
has decked itself forth in a thousand novel 
aspects, — at one time assuming the air of reason 
and philosophy; at another, appealing to the 
most vulgar prejudices of the human mind ; — now 
weaving itself into the texture of history, and 
then clothing itself in the maxims of political 
wisdom; — in some instances, concealing itself 
beneath the witchery of a well-imagined tale: 
and, in others, polluting even the very streams 
of salvation, by infusing a portion of its deadly 
virulence into the theology of the age.* 

* In proof of this, see Professor Milman's History of the 
Jews, and many other productions savouring of the Neolo- 
gical school. 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



9 



It is modern, for where, at any former period 
in the history of the world, did a thing so worth- 
less and abominable put on such an imposing 
air, and give itself forth as an angel of mercy to 
the afflicted race? Though it has taught men, 
that " adultery must be practised if we would 
obtain the advantages of life ; that female infide- 
lity, when known, is a small thing; and, when 
unknown, nothing;"* — that "there is no merit 
or crime in intention ;' f — that "the civil law is 
the sole foundation of right and wrong, and that 
religion has no obligation but as enjoined by the 
magistrate;'^ — that "all the morality of our 
actions lies in the judgment we ourselves form of 
them ;"§ — " that lewdness/' in certain cases only, 
" resembles thirst in a dropsy, and inactivity in 
a lethargy ;" || — that virtue is " only the love of 
ourselves;"^! — though these are the scandalous 
lessons which it has unblushingly taught man- 
kind, yet is it loudly proclaimed as the only sys- 
tem calculated to model and perfect humanity ; 

* Hume. f Volney's Law of Nature. 

X Hobbes. § Rousseau. 

|| Lord Herbert, the father of English Deists. 
Lord Bolingbroke. 



10 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



as the last and only refuge for the sorrowing, 
suffering, and unhappy children of men ! This 
it is which is to rescue them from all unworthy 
prejudices, which is to dissipate the mists of 
ages, which is to bring back the golden period of 
wisdom and reason, which is to convert the 
whole earth into a paradise, and which is to 
make men happy as angels under its mild and 
benignant sway! ! There is no cant so disgust- 
ing as that of infidelity. Though most of its 
advocates have been libertines, though its foot- 
steps may be traced in the blood which it has 
spilt, though it has trampled on all the laws of 
personal property and of individual right, though 
it pollutes and degrades wherever it touches, yet 
are its advocates ever and anon boasting of its 
sublime virtues, and its blessed achievements. 
One thing we may be quite sure of, that no one 
will listen to their vain and empty declamations 
till he has lost a certain portion of self-esteem, 
and till he wants to find an excuse for his con- 
duct in the laxness and uncertainty of his belief* 

* " The natural bias of the heart is to sin, and conse- 
quently to infidelity, the excuse and covering for sin." — See 
the Rev. Charles Bridge's Life of Miss M. J. Graham, p. 22. 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 11 

Looking at both the literary and vulgar part of 
modern infidels, we are constrained to say of 
them, in the words of the great apostle, " There 
is no fear of God before their eyes/' 



CHAPTER I. 



THE VIEWS WHICH INFIDELS HAVE ENTERTAINED 
RESPECTING THE MORAL CHARACTER OF GOD. 

God cannot be duly feared, as the proper object 
of religious homage, where his moral attributes 
and perfections are lost sight of. If we discon- 
nect his wisdom and power from his holiness 
and goodness and j ustice, it is impossible to con- 
ceive of him with reverence, or to think of him 
with complacency. In the Christian Scriptures, 
God's natural attributes are invariably repre- 
sented as the ministers of his benevolence, inte- 
grity, and faithfulness. They declare him to be 
" a God of truth, and without iniquity ; just and 
right"* in all his ways. They proclaim him to 
be " the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gra- 
cious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness 
and in truth ; keeping mercy for thousands, for- 

* Deut. xxxii, 4, 

C 



14 



A PORTRAITURE OF 



giving iniquity, transgression, and sin. and yet by 
no means clearing the guilty. "* They describe 
him as " of purer eyes than to behold evil/" and 
tell us that "he cannot look upon iniquity." f 
They exhibit him as " righteous in all his ways, 
and holy in all his works/' J Thev teach us, 
that he is "not a God that hath pleasure in 
wickedness, neither shall evil dwell with him."§ 
Such is the God of Revelation ; — a Being infi- 
nitely -wise and powerful indeed, but one, at the 
same time, " glorious in holiness, fearful in 
praises, and ever doing wonders ;"|| a Being be- 
fore whom the highest orders of created intelli- 
gences prostrate themselves and exclaim, " Holy, 
holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts ; the whole earth 
is full of his glory. 

How unlike are these descriptions of the eter- 
nal and immutable God, to the vague, contra- 
dictory, and even wicked representations of infi- 
delity. "We cannot," says Lord Bolingbroke, 
" ascribe goodness and justice to God, according 
to our ideas of them, nor argue with any cer- 

* Exod. xxxiv. 6. | Hab. i. 13. % Ps. cxlv. 17. 

* Psalm v. 4. || Exod. xv. 11. f Isa. vi. 3. 



MODERN SCEPTICISM , 



15 



tainty about them;" and again, " it is absurd to 
deduce moral obligations from the moral attri- 
butes of God, or to pretend to imitate him in 
those attributes.' ' The language held by Boling- 
broke is common to the infidel school. The 
entire moral character of God is overlooked by 
them, unless when they talk of his mercy, winch 
they always do in a manner totally inconsistent 
with the existence of an}' such thing as a moral 
government. Mercy displayed at the awful 
risk of prostrating the claims of immutable holi- 
ness, can only be another name for injustice ; 
and can therefore have no affinity to that infi- 
nitely benevolent Being who, in all the distribu- 
tions both of his goodness and mercy, acts in a 
manner worthy of himself, the source and pat- 
tern of all the rectitude and purity which exist 
throughout the universe. 

"The object," 5 says a distinguished author, 
u of the Christian adoration is Jehovah, the God 
of Israel ; whose character for holiness, justice, 
and goodness, is displayed in the doctrines and 
precepts of the gospel, in a more affecting light 
than by any of the preceding dispensations. But 



16 



A PORTRAITURE OF 



who or what is the god of deists? It is true they 
have been shamed out of the polytheism of the 
heathens. They have reduced their thirty thou- 
sand deities into one, but what is his character ? 
What attributes do they ascribe to him? For 
any thing that appears in their writings, he is as 
far from the holy, the just, and the good, as those 
of their heathen predecessors. They enjoy a 
pleasure, it is allowed, in contemplating the pro- 
ductions of wisdom and power ; but as to holi- 
ness, it is foreign from their inquiries : a holy God 
does not appear to be suited to their wishes."* 
After tracing the conflicting views of modern 
infidels, in reference to the proper standard of 
morality, the same powerful writer adds, — "It 
is worthy of notice that, amidst all the discord- 
ance of these writers, they agree in excluding the 
Divine Being from their theory of morals. They 
think after their manner ; but 6 God is not in all 
their thoughts/ In comparing the Christian 
doctrine of morality, the sum of which is love, 
with their atheistical jargon, one seems to hear 



* Fuller's Works, vol. i. p. 11. 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



17 



the voice of the Almighty, saying, 6 Who is this 
that darken eth counsel with words without know- 
ledge? Fear God, and keep his command- 
ments ; for this is the whole of man/ "* 



* Fuller's Works, vol. i. p. 27, 



18 



A PORTRAITURE OF 



CHAPTER II. 

THOUGH INFIDELS PROFESS TO HOLD THE DOCTRINE 
OF THE DIVINE EXISTENCE, YET THEY REFUSE OR 
NEGLECT ALL RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. 

In this feature of their character, they are more 
inconsistent, and more irreligious too, than even 
pagan idolators themselves, who evince great 
zeal and make many sacrifices in the service of 
their dumb idols. One would imagine, that if 
there be one great first cause, the Creator and 
upholder of all things, the benignant source of 
all the happiness which creatures in any part of 
the universe enjoy — one would imagine, I say, 
that if such a Being exist, he is entitled to the 
devout and spiritual worship of all his intelligent 
creatures. Such is the dictate even of unassisted 
reason, as has been demonstrated by a reference 
to the rudest and most brutalized portions of the 
human race. How astounding then is the fact, 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 19 

that only in Christian countries can men be 
found denying the validity of stated worship to 
the Deity ; as if the only use to be made of Reve- 
lation were to employ it for the horrid purpose of 
obliterating all our natural feelings of reverence 
for his awful perfections ! In the inspired volume 
we learn that " God is a spirit, and that they 
who worship him must worship him in spirit and 
in truth."* This supposes the duty of worship, 
and prescribes the qualities by which it is to be 
distinguished. The language of those who know 
the divine character, and who possess a right 
spirit, will ever be, " O come, let us sing unto 
the Lord ; let us make a joyful noise to the rock 
of our salvation. Let us come before his pre- 
sence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful 
noise unto him with psalms. For the Lord is a 
great God, and a great King above all gods. O 
come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel 
before the Lord our Maker; for he is our God, 
and we are the people * of his pasture, and the 
sheep of his hand."f Men may boast as they 



B John iv. 24. 



t Psalm xcv. 



20 



A PORTRAITURE OF 



please of their belief in one God, but if they do 
him no actual homage, if they have no stated 
seasons and places of devotion, they are in a far 
worse condition than were those benighted Athe- 
nians, whom Paul beheld prostrate at an altar 
dedicated to "the unknown God.'* It is the 
temper, the disposition of infidelity, no less than 
its preposterous creed, which distances it from 
the spirit of true worship. Devotion cannot 
grow in a soil on which the inexpressible levity 
of scepticism has cast its withering blight. Reli- 
gious awe cannot be felt in a mind that has no 
sensible hold of God's moral perfections. Love 
to God, drawing the soul forth in repeated and 
habitual acts of grateful adoration, cannot dwell 
in a heart where worldly lusts and enmity 
against the moral government of the Most High 
are struggling for the mastery. 

The very same thing which led men of old 
to forsake the worship of the only living and 
true God, and to betake themselves to the abo- 
minations of idolatry, is that which banishes 



- Acts xvii. 23. 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



21 



from every circle of infidels every thing like the 
semblance of religious homage to the Deity. 
Is it demanded what this said thing is? I reply, 
in the language of the Apostle, " they did not 
like to retain God in their knowledge.'"* They 
lost all delight in his holy character, and hence 
they sought relief for their guilt}' feelings in the 
exercises of a religion which corresponded with 
the dictates of their own impure hearts. 

Deists are placed somewhat peculiarly. As 
they are found only where Revelation has either 
completely banished the grossness of idolatry, or 
where, at least, it has shed its benignant rays, 
they cannot for shame revel in the impurities of 
heathenism ; but as they take no delight what- 
ever in the character of that one God whom 
they profess to adore, they live in the habitual 
and avowed neglect of Ins worship. The ances- 
tors of paganism forsook his worship, " because 
they did not like to retain him in then thoughts 
and for the same reason precisely infidelity has 
no temple, no altar, no sacrifice, no avowed, 



* Rom. i. 28. 



22 A PORTRAITURE OF 

habitual, and well-defined worship to that glo- 
rious Being, from the near contemplation of 
whose character it shrinks with instinctive dis- 
like and dread. 

Could we see infidelity cultivating the spirit 
of prayer, laying aside its extreme and disgusting 
levity, and evincing an anxiety to arrive at the 
true knowledge of God, we should begin to 
hope on behalf of its unhappy victims ; but 
reckless as its advocates are of all devotion, and 
leaning as they do to their own understanding, 
and evincing an utter contempt for every thing 
sacred, we are compelled to look on them as in 
a condition peculiarly hopeless, and must say 
respecting them " There is no fear of God before 
their eyes." 



MODERN' SCEPTICISM, 



23 



CHAPTER III. 

A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE CHARACTER OF THAT 
MORALITY WHICH INFIDELITY INCULCATES AND 
DISPLAYS. 

All who read the Bible attentively, whatever 
they may think of its divine origin, must be 
struck with the perfection of its moral precepts, 
and especially with the sublime and cogent 
reasons which it assigns for the performance of 
every duty which we owe both to God and man.* 
That monster of wickedness, Thomas Paine, 
whom no man that ever knew could trust, has 
said respecting the Bible — " I feel for the honour 
of my Creator in having such a book called after 
his name."' He must surely have meant, that he 
felt for himself, when he discovered in the Bible, 
if he ever read it, such an array of holy and 
benevolent precepts upon which it had been his 

* See the second part of this Treatise, chap. i. sect. 3. 



24 



A PORTRAITURE OF 



habitual practice, during a long life, to trample 
with proud disdain ! 

The morality of the Bible is not the morality 
of mere decorum, the garnishing of the outward 
man, the " making clean the outside of the cup 
and platter ;" it is the morality of principle, — it is 
the morality of right dispositions, — it is the mo- 
rality of love to God and love to man. Infidelity 
says, " there is no merit or crime in intention ;" 
but Christianity says, that hatred is murder,* 
that secret lust is adultery,f and that we must 
" love the Lord our God with all our heart, and 
strength, and mind, and our neighbour as our- 
selves.'^ It prohibits the resentment of in- 
juries, and urges the forgiveness of enemies. § 
It tells us "to weep with them that weep, 
and rejoice with them that rejoice." || It en- 
forces every relative duty by an appeal to 
motives equally tender and sublime,^ and it de- 
mands a personal sanctity of manners, which 
admits of no reserve, and leaves room for the 



* 1 John, iii. 14, 15. 
t Matt. xxii. 37—39. 
j| Horn. xii. 15. 



t Matt, xxvii. 28. 

§ Rom. xii. 19—21. 

f Eph. v.25. vi. 1,5—9. 



MODERN SCEPTICISM . 25 

indulgence of no single habit of transgres- 
sion.* 

If infidelity were from above, it would bear 
the marks of its celestial origin. God must be 
holy ; and a religion suited to his intelligent 
creatures ought to cany with it some resem- 
blance to his moral nature. Infidelity has no such 
resemblance in either theory or practice. In 
theory it is an apology for almost every crime 
that disgraces human nature; and in the dif- 
ferent codes of its advocates, every species of 
transgression is either defended or palliated. 
And what it is in theory, it is yet more abun- 
dantly in practice. Its leading characters have 
been worthless beyond expression. What were 
Herbert, and Hobbes, and Shaftesbury, and 
Woolston, and Tindal, and Bolingbroke, but so 
many notorious hypocrites, who, for a piece of 
paltry* self-interest, professed to love and reve- 
rence Christianity, while they were all the while 
insidiously endeavouring to lower its credit in the 
world? In the long and gloomy catalogue of 



* Heb. xii 14. 

D 



26 



A PORTRAITURE OF 



human delinquents, where shall we find two 
miscreants such as Rochester and Wharton r 
They were indeed a reproach to our common 
nature. Morgan's dishonest quotation of Scrip- 
toe to serve a purpose, and his miserable cant 
in professing himself to be a Christian, notwith- 
standing his amazing zeal to subvert all the pe- 
culiarities of revealed religion, speak volumes as 
to his notions of morality. Hume, the most 
dishonest and prejudiced of all historians,* died 
as a fool dieth, cracking vulgar jokes with some 
of Iris unhappy companions. t Voltaire so little 
regarded truth, that, in speaking in his " Ignorant 

* How can the guardians of the rising generation still 
leave them to the guidance of such a sycophant in politics, 
and such a sceptic in religion ? 

t " Nothing but the most frivolous dissipation of thought 
can make even the inconsiderate forget the supreme impor- 
tance of everything which relates to the expectation of a 
future existence. Whilst the infidel mocks at the supersti- 
tions of the vulgar, insults over their credulous fears, their 
childish errors, or fantastic rites, it does not occur to him 
to observe that the most preposterous device by which the 
weakest devotee ever believed he was securing the happi- 
ness of a future life, is more rational than unconcern about 
it. Upon this subject, nothing is so absurd as indifference ; 
no folly so contemptible as thoughtlessness and levity." — 
See a work entitled " The Nature of the Proof of the 
Christian Religion," &c, by D. B. Baker, A.M., p. 42. 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 27 

Philosopher'* of the toleiative spirit of the ancient 
Romans, he observes, " they never persecuted a 
single philosopher for his opinions from the time 
of Romulus till the popes got possession of their 
power." In this passage a vail is drawn over 
the massacre of thousands and tens of thousands 
of unoffending Christians. In like manner, this 
boasted friend of liberty and reason, when he 
describes the expatriation, or cruel death of one 
million of French Protectants, speaks of them as 
" weak and obstinate men.'' As these Protest- 
ants, not being infidels, were stripped of all claim 
to philosophy, we suppose it was a small matter 
to murder such vulgar persons in cold blood ! 
We find this same champion of infidelity request- 
ing his friend D'Alembert to tell for him a direct 
he, by denying that he was the author of the 
" Philosophical Dictionary.*'' His friend told 
the He for him ; and he has himself well de- 
scribed his own character in the following 
words : — " Monsieur Abbe, I must be read, no 
matter whether I am believed or not.' ? Vol- 
taire, after all his infidelity, being threatened by 
the authorities, died a Catholic. 



28 



A PORTRAITURE OF 



Rousseau was profligate and immoral from his 
youth up. "I have been a rogue/' says he, 
" and am so still sometimes, for trifles which I 
had rather take than ask for." He abjured 
Protestantism, and became Catholic ; " for 
which," says he, " in return, I was to receive 
subsistence ; but," he adds, "from this interested 
conversion, nothing remained but the remem- 
brance of my having been both a dupe and an 
apostate." After this, settling at Geneva, and 
finding that there he was denied the rights of 
Christian citizens, he renounced popery and con- 
formed to the religion of the state. The life of 
this wretched man was one continued and unin- 
terrupted scene of hypocrisy, fornication, seduc- 
tion, base intrigue, and, withal, constant violation 
of the rules of honesty. What he said of one of 
the events of horror which marked his career 
may be applied, with too much truth, to his 
whole history — ({ Guilty without remorse, I 
soon became so without measure.*'' 



MODERN SCEPTICISM, 



29 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE PRACTICAL EFFECTS OF INFIDELITY. 

It is no wonder surely that such a race of men 
should have prepared the minds of their disciples 
for deeds of unusual atrocity. In a neighbour- 
ing country, a fit theatre presented itself for the 
exhibition of infidelity in its own native colours. 
There gross superstition on the one hand, and 
arbitrary government on the other, led thousands 
virtuously to sigh for national deliverance. With 
loud professions of love of liberty and self- 
devoted patriotism, infidelity rushed into the 
field of conflict ; but though she professed to be 
an angel of mercy, she soon proved herself to be 
but a fiend of perdition. There was no deed of 
horror which she did not perpetrate. Within 
her destructive sphere life and property ceased 
to have any value attached to them, The most 
d 2 



30 



A PORTRAITURE OF 



virtuous citizens fell victims to her insatiable 
cruelty. Personal agrandisement became the 
sole object of her ambition ; and, under the fair 
pretence of philosophy, of enlightened policy, 
and of regard to the public weal, a whole nation 
was laid in nuns, every public institution was 
plundered, the state was sunk in anarchy and 
confusion, deeds of blood too shocking to de- 
scribe were perpetrated, and the church herself, 
already sufficiently degraded, was made the 
organ of propagating blasphemies the most hide- 
ous against the God of heaven. " Infidelity,'" 
observes a spirited and able chronicler of these 
events,* " having got possession of the power of 
the state, every nerve was exerted to efface from 
the mind all ideas of religion and morality. The 
doctrine of the immortalitv of the soul, or a 
future state of rewards and punishments, so 
essential to the preservation of order in society, 
and to the prevention of crimes, was publicly 
ridiculed, and the people were taught to believe 
that death was an everlasting sleep. 



* Judge Rush, of the United States. 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



31 



" They ordered the words * Temple of Rea- 
son' to be inscribed on the churches, in con- 
tempt of the doctrine of revelation. Atheistical 
and licentious homilies were published in the 
churches, instead of the old service ; and a ludi- 
crous imitation of the Greek mythology exhibited 
under the title of 6 The Religion of Reason.' 
Nay, they went so far as to dress up, with the 
most fantastic decorations, a common strumpet, 
whom they blasphemously styled 6 The Goddess 
of Reason,' and who was carried to church on 
the shoulders of some jacobins selected for the 
purpose, escorted by the national guards and 
the constituted authorities. When they got to 
the church, the strumpet was placed on the altar 
erected for the purpose, and harangued the 
people, who, in return, professed the deepest 
adoration of her, and sung the Carmagnole and 
other songs by way of worshipping her. This 
horrid scene — almost too horrible to relate — was 
concluded by burning the prayer-book, confes- 
sional, and every thing appropriated to the use 
of public worship ; numbers, in the mean time, 
danced round the flames with every appearance 



32 A PORTRAITURE OF 

of frantic and infernal mirth.*' I might also 
notice the fiend-like malignity which was 
directed against the institution of the Sabbath, 
during the reign of terror in France, as if the 
sole design of that desperate faction was not 
only to efface all reverence for the Deity from 
the public mind, but also to destroy every 
memorial of an intelligent creature's obligation 
to him, and every symbol of the existence of a 
moral government. 

Let revolutionary and infidel France teach 
mankind, by one great and affecting lesson, 
what the enemies of Revelation can do to heighten 
the standard of national morals, and to render 
inviolable the persons and properties of men. 
With the page of their own infamous history 
before them, let sceptics of every school blush 
to talk of the benefits which their system is fitted 
to confer on the human race. And let them 
remember, that the grand reason why the pre- 
valence of then- principles has ever issued in the 
disruption of every social and moral tie, has been 
because there was " no fear of God before their 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



33 



CHAPTER V. 

A CONTRASTED VIEW OF INFIDELITY AND 
CHRISTIANITY.* 

From such scenes as these, how delightful to 
turn to the pure, and mild, and benignant genius 
of Christianity ! ^Yere her golden rule — " as ve 

* The Bishop of Calcutta, in his twenty-second lecture 
on the " Evidences of Christianity," has finely contrasted 
the character of Voltaire with that of the Hon. Robert 
Boyle. " Now contrast," says he, " with this character, 
any of the eminent Christians that adorned their own 
country and Europe about the same period. Take the 
Hon. Robert Boyle, of whom it is difficult to say 
whether his piety, as a Christian, or his fame, as a philo- 
sopher, was most remarkable. Consider the compass of 
his mind, the solidity of his judgment, the fertility of his 
pen, the purity of his morals, the amiableness of his temper, 
his beneficence to the poor and distressed, his uniform 
friendships, his conscientious aim at truth in all his pursuits 
and determinations. At an early age he examined the 
question of the Christian religion to the bottom, on occa- 
sion of some distracting doubts which assaulted his mind. 
Confirmed in the truth of Christianity, his whole life was 
a comment on his sincerity. He was admitted to certain 
secret meetings before he had reached mature years — but 
they were graced and enlightened associations — for can- 



34 



A PORTE AIT17RE OF 



would that men should do unto you, do ye even 
so unto them" — the universal law of all the fami- 
lies and nations under heaven, how would it 
change the face of society ! — how would it stem 
the torrent of pride, ambition, and vain glory!— 

vassing subjects of natural philosophy, at a time when the 
civil wars suspended all academical studies, and they led to 
the formation of one of the noblest establishments of his 
country.* His disinterestedness and humility were such 
that he refused the provostship of Eton, and the honours 
of a peerage, that he might devote his talents and time and 
noble fortune to works of public utility and benevolence. 
His uniform regard to truth made him the example and 
admiration of his age. His tenderness of conscience led 
him to decline the most honourable officet in the scientific 
world, because he doubted about the oaths prescribed, and 
his reverence for the glorious Creator induced him to 
pause whenever he pronounced his name. From such a 
student we may expect truth. From such a philosopher 
we receive, with unmixed pleasure, * A Treatise of the 
high veneration which men's intellect owes to God or a 
discourse ' On greatness of mind promoted by Christianity.'' §" 

The same excellent author furnishes the following ad- 
mirable contrasts: — 

" Contrast, in point of mere benevolence, the lives and 
deportment of such an infidel as Rousseau, and such a 
Christian as Doddridge ; the one all pride, selfishness, fury, 
caprice, rage, gross sensuality — casting about firebrands and 
death — professing no rule of morals but his feelings, abus- 
ing the finest powers to the dissemination, not merely of 

* The Royal Society. t President of the Royal Society. 

i Published in 1085, § Published in 1690. 



MODERN" SCEPTICISM. 



do 



how would it cause wars, and rumours of wars, 
to cease to the very ends of the earth ! — how 
would it unite the whole family of man in one 
common bond of brotherhood ! — how would it 
banish injustice, cruelty, oppression, and licen- 

objections against Christianity, but of the most licentious 
and profligate principles; — Doddridge all purity, mildness, 
meekness, and love, ardent in his good will to man, the 
friend and counsellor of the sorrowful ; regular, calm, con- 
sistent ; dispensing peace and truth by his labours and by 
his writings ; living, not for himself, but for the common 
good, to which he sacrificed his health and even life. 

<( Or contrast such a man as Volney with Swartze. 
They both visit distant lands, — they are active and indefa- 
tigable in their pursuits, — they acquire celebrity, and com- 
municate respectively a certain impulse to their widened 
circles ; but the one, jaundiced by infidelity, the sport of 
passion and caprice, lost to all argument and right feeling, 
comes home to diffuse the poison of unbelief, to be a misery 
to himself, the plague and disturber of his country, the 
dark calumniator of the Christian faith. The other remains 
far from his native land to preach the peaceful doctrine of 
the gospel on the shores of India ; he becomes the friend 
and brother of those whom he had never seen, and only 
heard of as fellow-creatures, — he diffuses blessings for half 
a century, — he ensures the admiration of the heathen 
prince near whom he resides, — he becomes the mediator 
between contending tribes and nations, — he establishes a 
reputation for purity, integrity, disinterestedness, meek- 
ness, which compel all around to respect and love him, — 
he forms churches,— he instructs children, — he disperses 
the seeds of charity and truth, — he is the model of all the 
virtues he enjoins." 



36 



A PORTRAITURE OF 



tiousness from the earth ! In proportion as 
Christian principles have triumphed, in that 
same proportion immorality has disappeared, 
and all social virtues have been practised; and 
when it is universal, which we are assured it 
will be, it will bring moral health along with it 
to all the dwellers upon earth. 

" Of all the dispositions and habits which 
lead to political prosperity/' said the immortal 
Washington, " religion and morality are indis- 
pensable supports. In vain would that man 
claim the tribute of patriotism who should labour 
to subvert the great pillars of human happiness, 
those firmest props of men and citizens. The 
mere politician, equally with the pious man, 
ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume 
could not trace all their connexions with private 
and public felicity. Let it be simply asked, 
Where is the security for property, for reputa- 
tion, for life, if the sense of religious obligation 
desert the oaths which are the instruments of 
investigation in the courts of justice ? And let 
us with caution indulge the supposition that 
morality can be maintained without religion. 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 37 

Whatever may be conceded to the influence of 
refined education on minds of a peculiar struc- 
ture, reason and experience both forbid us to 
expect that national morality can prevail in ex- 
clusion of religious principle."* 

In a happier age, fast approaching, Christi- 
anity will dictate rules of right government ; it 
will establish equitable principles of national 
commerce; it will teach kings and senates how 
to rule in wisdom and love; it will remove the 
great barriers to national tranquillity and national 
prosperity out of the way, by constituting the 
u people all righteous," and setting up the au- 
thority of God as the best possible support of 
laws which accord with Ins word. 

Infidelity can dream of no such renovation. 
Its past steps may be traced in blood and 
anarchy ; and the prospect which stretches be- 
fore it is scarcely less appalling. It has no link 
whereby to bind man to man, because it severs 
man from his Maker. It is essentially heartless 
and cruel. It rules without God, and would 

* Washington's farewell Address to the people of the 
United States. 

E 



38 A PORTRAITURE OF 

exclude him from his own world, and nothing 
awaits it but the exposure and infamy which 
must sooner or later overtake all systems of 
evil. 

O, what a world were this if all men were 
infidels ! Then, indeed, would they soon destroy 
themselves. Their vices would be such as to 
annihilate all the social sympathies, and to cause 
the various elements of society to rush together 
in wild confusion and nun. 

What cause of congratulation is it, that infi- 
delity, in its more direct forms, has so little power 
in this country to mould our national institutions ! 
Xo one who marks the zeal and malignity of our 
infidel press, can doubt, for a moment, what 
would be the fate of every honest and virtuous 
family, if infidels could, by any means, acquire 
ascendancy. There is a great deal of secret 
and avowed infidelity in the land: but, blessed 
be God, our property, our domestic peace, our 
national security are not as yet menaced by the 
impugners of revelation. 

It is at the same time a mournful considera- 
tion, that so many of the labouring classes of the 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 39 

community are vitiated by the wretched dogmas 
of this school. It is a distinct characteristic of 
moderm infidelity, that it aims to subvert the 
hopes of the poor. The writings of Mr. Paine, 
combined with other circumstances, have led to 
this feature in its malignant history. The liber- 
tinism of sceptics, till of late years, was regarded 
as the exclusive privilege of the educated, the 
intellectual, and the distinguished portion of 
mankind. Xow it is far otherwise ; the pestilence 
has spread itself, and operatives, in every depart- 
ment of trade, are plied by the apostles of infi- 
delity, who, not content with destroying the 
poor man's hopes of inmiortahty, set themselves 
to lower all Ins notions of moral obligation, to 
vitiate all his social habits, to foster in him the 
spirit of rebellion against all constituted authority, 
and thus, as it were, to deck then' victim for the 
day of sacrifice, I firmly believe that in London 
alone, to say nothing of other large populations, 
there are thousands and tens of thousands lost 
to industry, to health, to reputation, and to 
peace, outcasts from society, and terrors to the 
community, who might trace the utter wreck of 



40 A PORTRAITURE OF 

their characters to their association with com- 
panions of infidel sentiments, and to their fami- 
liarity with the infidel press. It has been my 
lot as a Christian minister, more than once, to 
confirm these affecting statements by the unequi- 
vocal avowals of infidels themselves, in the last 
periods of human existence, and also by witness- 
ing in some, once promising characters, the bane- 
ful effects arising from the adoption of infidel 
opinions. 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 



CHAPTER VI. 

AX AFFECTIONATE APPEAL TO THOSE WHO HAVE 
BEEN ENTANGLED IN THE SNARES OF INFIDELITY". 

When I reflect how many there are whose faith 
in Christianity has been shaken, and whose 
minds have fallen a prey to the wiles of scep- 
ticism; and, moreover, when I call to remem- 
brance that so many of the young and promis- 
ing rank among the victims of this moral conta- 
gion, I cannot but feel an earnest desire to become 
an instrument of good to a portion of my fellow- 
creatures, at once so interesting and so much 
exposed. O that God would strengthen me to 
speak a word to unhappy and deluded sceptics ! 
With all the zeal for their salvation that I can 
possibly give utterance to, would I make my 
appeal to then' judgments and consciences. Let 
me bespeak their candour. I am conscious of 
no motive but a desire to honour God, and to 



42 A PORTRAITURE OF 

save their souls. Regarding them as the victims 
of fatal error, I am devoutly anxious to see them 
extricated from it. Their creed I hold to be 
alike gloomy and pernicious, and I would shew 
them a more excellent way, and would introduce 
them, with a bounding heart, into the light and 
liberty of Christianity. 

What, then, let me ask, has led you to 
reject Christianity ? Have you carefully ex- 
amined it, and found its evidence defective? 
If so, where does the difficulty press ? If 
you are really perplexed, ask counsel of some 
enlightened Christian, and he will readily aid 
you in disposing of the doubts and misgivings of 
a mind really sincere. I believe a doubting man 
may be sincere. There are many volumes 
suited to your state, and which you might read 
with the greatest possible advantage. Let me 
particularly recommend to your attentive perusal 
" The Gospel its own ^Yitness," by the late Rev. 
Andrew Fuller ; K The Evidences of Chris- 
tianity," by Dr. Paley : i » A Short Method with 
Deists,"" by Leslie; Dr. Chalmers' work on ''''The 
Christian Revelation," and a work entitled U A 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 43 

Treatise on the Xature and Causes of Doubt in 
Religious Questions.'*'" 

But let me deal honestly with you, as your 
friend. Have you all this supposed difficulty about 
the evidence and the truth of Christianity ? Or 
is your hesitancy of a very different order ? Do 
you feel a repugnance to the holy requirements 
of Christianity, and a consequent dread of the 
judgments which it threatens? And does this 
prompt in you the baneful wish, " O that it might 
not be true ? ? ' Remember what Rochester said — 
" A bad life is the only grand objection to this 
book;" laying his hand emphatically on the 
Bible. Has not this been very much the case 
with you ? You have fallen into sinful courses 
— you have yielded to the ways of the world — 
you have gone with a multitude to do evil — you 
have forsaken your better fellowships — you have 
learnt to spend your Sabbaths in pleasure, and 
you have gradually become more and more 
careless. In this state you have been very un- 
happy at times ; you have thought, well, " what if, 
after all, the Bible be true ! What if, after all, 
the wicked shall be turned into hell !" At this 



44 A PORTRAITURE OF 

juncture, some one further advanced in scepti- 
cism than yourself has aided you in shaking off 
the galling yoke of conscience. He has put 
some infidel publication into your hand ; you 
have read it ; it has fallen in with your previous 
wishes and habits; you have said, "This is the 
very thing I wanted and you have, at last, 
learned to revile the Bible, to set light by its 
hopes, and to talk slanderously of its professors. 

Come now, my friend, and let us reason toge- 
ther. Look back on the process. Why did you so 
readily drink in the poison contained in the infidel 
volume ? Why ? because you were in a state 
of mind very much the opposite of that which 
the Bible demands. But what have you found, 
my friend, in the regions of scepticism ? You 
have relinquished the hopes of Christianity, by 
Christ Jesus. What have you obtained in their 
place ? x\midst all your acquirements, have you 
found peace of mind ? Will your present charac- 
ter and your present religion sustain you in a 
dying hour ? Multitudes of infidels have found 
their creed, at death, insufficient to meet the 
awful catastrophe. Not a single instance can 



MODERN SCEPTICISM, 



45 



be produced, in which a believer in Revelation 
was terrified or dismayed because he had been a 
Christian, Many have been distressed on ac- 
count of the defective evidence of their Chris- 
tianity, but none on account of their being 
Christians. Does it never occur to you, that if 
Christianity be true, you are undone? — that 
if it be false, he who believes it can suffer no 
injury ?* \Yho, let me ask you, are your com- 
panions ? What are your pursuits ? and what 
your hopes? I deeply feel for you, while I 
greatly blame you. You may have been inade- 
quately instructed, — you may have seen bad 
examples, — you may have witnessed great in- 
consistencies in some of the professors of religion. 
Granting, however, that all this may have been 
the case, still the interests of the soul are a per- 

* " Indisputably," said Lord Byron, in a letter sent by 
him to the late Mrs. Sheppard, " the firm believers in the 
Gospel have a great advantage over all others, for this 
simple reason — that if true, they will have their reward 
hereafter ; and if there be no hereafter, they can be but 
with the infidel in his eternal sleep, having had the assistance 
of an exalted hope through life, without subsequent disap- 
pointment, since (at the worst, for them) c out of nothing, 
nothing can arise,' — not even sorrow." 



46 



A PORTRAITURE OF 



sonal concern. No man can stand in your place 
when you die. I beseech you, then, to arouse 
yourself from that lethargy into which sin and 
unbeliefs acting and reacting, have conjointly 
sunk you. 

Ask yourself this question, " What makes me 
a sceptic ? Is it because I have examined for 
myself, and know the Gospel to be a fable ? or 
is it because I desire that it may be one ?" And 
why should you desire this ? If Christianity 
does not meet your case, no other system can. 
Infidelity has not met your case ; it has not 
awakened hope ; it has not allayed despair ; it has 
not ministered peace. No: it has only stupified 
a conscience which must yet awake ; it has only 
taught you to put the evil day far away ; it has 
only blinded you for a time to the dread pros- 
pects of a future and impending eternity. 

Why, I ask again, should you wish that 
Christianity may not be true ? Is it because 
you feel yourself guilty, and shrink from the 
condemnation which it threatens ? Well might 
you thus shrink if it did not reveal a remedy, 
as well as disclose a disease and point out its 



MODERN SCEPTICISM. 47 

consequences. You are guilty — yea, ten thou- 
sand times more guilty than you ever imagined 
yourself to be ; but what I maintain is, that if 
you turn away the eye of faith from that great 
sacrifice which Christianity reveals, you must 
sink for ever beneath the pressure of your guilt, 
and with this superadded horror, that you pe- 
rished at the threshold of mercy. 

Is it because you do not love the pure and 
holy demands of Christianity, that you turn 
away from it ? Well ; but is not this, its pure 
character, the proof of its celestial origin ? and if 
so, will it avail you to reject it ? Will the holy 
life it requires be less obligatory because you 
determine not to pursue it ? Will the great 
Judge excuse you at last because you loved 
your sins more than his revealed will ? 

Besides, what is to root out unholy inclina- 
tions, to correct depraved habits, to superinduce 
devotion, and to raise the soul to God ? Is it 
not divine meditation on the blessed word? Here 
is that consecrated fountain which, by the grace 
of God, shall quench your thirst of sin. Here 
you may read of "the new heart" till you 



48 A PORTRAITURE, ETC. 

know, by experience, what it is. Here is a 
divine Deliverer, whose " name is called Jesus, 
because he saves his people from their sins."* 
Here is a divine Sanctifier, who can "create 
within you a clean heart, and renew within you 
a right spirit.'" '+ — One word more, and I have 
done. iVsk God to teach you. Ask him, if the 
Bible be from him, to enable you to come to the 
belief of it. Ask him to remove your blindness, 
to allay your prejudices, and, above all, to prevent 
any sinful habit from giving a bias to your 
dicision. Make no delay in this work. If you 
die a stranger to the hopes of Christianity, it had 
been better for you that you had never been 
born ! 



* Matt, i, 21. 



f Psalm li. 10. 



PART SECOND. 



THE TRUTH AXD EXCELLENCE OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 



CHAPTER L 

THE COMPARATIVE CREDIT DUE TO THE CONCLUSIONS 
OF SCEPTICS AND CHRISTIANS. 

u For we have not believed cunningly devised fables."* 

Such, at least, is the Christian's estimate of the 
stability of his own hopes ; and such is the 
settled conviction of every sincere friend of 
revealed truth. When the moral character and 
habits of those who profess then belief in Chris- 
tianity is taken into account, there can be no 
hesitation in admitting that they are strictly 
honest in the avowal of their faith, and that 
they do not affect to repose on the truth of a 

* 2 Pet. i. 16. 

F 



50 THE TRUTH AXD EXCELLENCE 

system which, after all, they secretly disbelieve. 
That there are many false pretenders to the 
faith of Christ is readily conceded; but after 
the names of all such have been struck off from 
the list of its genuine friends, there will yet 
remain a multitude of honest men, far above all 
suspicion, who, in life, and at death, have pro- 
fessed their sincere and heart-felt belief in the 
religion of Jesus of Nazareth. To impugn 
their integrity, as men of veracity, would be 
alike absurd and unjust. They are, beyond 
doubt, entitled to all credit for sincerity, when, 
with the Bible in their hands, they exclaim, 
" We have not followed cunningly devised 
fables." 

The great question then is, are they mistaken 
in the estimate which they have formed of the 
Bible ? Are they under the influence of a delusion, 
though they fondly believe that they have em- 
braced the truth of God ? In deciding such in- 
quiries as these, several considerations naturally 
occur to the mind, irrespective even of the direct 
evidences of the Christian Revelation. 

What, then, has been the amount of intellectual 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 51 

qualification possessed by Christians for inves- 
tigating the truth or falsehood of their hopes ? 
It may be true, indeed, that the mass of those 
who have embraced the gospel have been little 
elevated, in point of mind, above any other 
equal portion of the human race ; although it 
cannot be denied, that in Christian countries 
the common people are much superior to their 
fellows in heathen lands. But be this as it may, 
can any one affirm that among the list of Chris- 
tian advocates there are not to be found multi- 
tudes of men in the highest degree qualified to 
decide upon any question of evidence submitted 
to their notice ? Will it be pretended that imbe- 
cility of intellect produced the faith of such men 
as Sir Isaac Xewton, John Locke, Sir Matthew 
Hale, the Hon. Robert Boyle, Bishop Butler, 
Dr. Watts, Mr. Wilberforce, Dr. Paley, Dr. 
Beattie, Dr. Chalmers, and Robert Hall ? Such 
a pretence, on the part of any infidel, would be 
equally fatal to his sense and candour. In grasp 
of mind, in depth of erudition, in diversity and 
extent of science, the pledged advocates of the 
gospel have had no rivals in the republic of 



52 



THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



letters, or in the ranks of scepticism.* All who 
know any thing of the state of facts, must concede 
this point, that the sublimest exercise of reason 
is not incompatible with the most profound defer- 

* The following eloquent passage, from a speech of the 
late Lord Erskine, delivered by him in the Court of King's 
Bench, on occasion of a prosecution for the publication of 
Paine's " Age of Reason," may not be unacceptable, as 
tending to illustrate the position, that superiority of intel- 
lect has been enlisted on the side of Christianity : — 

" It seems, gentlemen," said his Lordship, " this is an 
age of reason ; and the time and the person are at last 
arrived, that are to dissipate the errors which have over- 
spread the past generation of ignorance. The believers 
in Christianity are many, but it belongs to the few that are 
wise to correct their credulity. Belief is an act of reason, 
and superior reason may, therefore, dictate to the weak. 

" In running the mind along the list of sincere and 
devout Christians, I cannot help lamenting that Newton 
had not lived to this day, to have had his shallowness filled 
up with the new flood of light. 

" But the subject is too awful for irony ; I will speak 
plainly and directly. Newton was a Christian ! — Newton, 
whose mind burst forth from the fetters cast by Nature 
upon our finite conceptions. Newton ! whose science was 
truth, and the foundation of whose knowledge of it was 
philosophy ; not those visionary and arrogant presumptions 
which too often usurp its name, but philosophy, resting 
upon the basis of methamatics, which,like figures, cannot lie. 
Newton, who carried the line and rule to the utmost bar- 
riers of the creation, and explored the principles by which, 
no doubt, all created matter is held together and exists. 

" But this extraordinary man, in the mighty reach of 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



53 



ence to the truth and excellence of Revelation. 
It is easy for some infidel demagogue to vaunt 
himself of his great wisdom and learning be- 
fore an ignorant and vicious assembly ; but let the 

his mind, overlooked, perhaps, the errors which a minuter 
investigation of the created things on this earth might have 
taught him of the essence of his Creator. 

" What, then, shall be said of the great Mr. Boyle, who 
looked into the organic structure of all matter, even to the 
brute inanimate substances which the foot treads on ? 
Such a man may be supposed to have been equally qualified 
with Mr. Paine to 4 look through Nature, up to Nature's 
God.' Yet, the result of all his contemplation was, the 
most confirmed and devout belief of all which the other 
held in contempt, as despicable and drivelling superstition, 

" But this error might, perhaps, arise from a want of 
due attention to the foundations of human judgment, and 
the structure of that understanding which God has given 
us for the investigation of truth. 

" Let that question be answered by Mr. Locke, who 
was, to the highest pitch of devotion and adoration, a Chris- 
tian. Mr. Locke, whose office was to detect the errors of 
thinking, by going up to the fountains of thought, and 
to direct into the proper track of reasoning the devious 
mind of man, by shewing him its whole process, from the 
first perceptions of sense to the last conclusions of ratioci- 
nation ; putting a rein, besides, upon false opinion, by 
practical rules for the conduct of human judgment. 

" But, these men were only deep thinkers, and lived in 
their closets, unaccustomed to the traffic of the world, and 
to the laws which practically regulate mankind ! 

" Gentlemen ! in the place where we now sit to admi- 
nister the justice of this great country, above a century 



54 



THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



entire history of the Christian era be appealed 
to as the proofs that the choicest spirits in each 
age, since the clays of the apostles, have been 
the professed adherents of the gospel. Chris- 

ago, the never-to-be-forgotten Sir Matthew Hale presided, — 
whose faith in Christianity is an exalted commentary upon 
its truth and reason, and whose life was a glorious example 
of its fruits in man, — administering human justice, with a 
wisdom and purity drawn from the pure fountain of the 
Christian dispensation, which has been, and will be in all 
ages, a subject of the highest reverence and admiration. 

" But it is said by the author, that the Christian fable 
is but the tale of the more ancient superstitions of the 
world, and may easily be detected by a proper understand- 
ing of the mythologies of the heathen. 

" Did Milton understand those mythologies ? was he less 
versed than Mr. Paine in the superstitions of the world ? 
No : they were the subject of his immortal song ; and though 
shut out from all recurrence to them, he poured them forth 
from the stores of memory, rich with all that man ever 
knew, and laid them in their order, as the illustration of 
that exalted faith, the unquestionable source of that fervid 
genius, which cast a sort of shade upon all the other works 
of man. The mysterious incarnation of our blessed Sa- 
viour (which this work blasphemes in words so wholly 
unfit for the mouth of a Christian, or for the ear of a 
court of justice, that I dare not, and will not, give them 
utterance), Milton made the grand conclusion of the 
" Paradise Lost," — the rest from his finished labours, — and 
the ultimate hope, expectation, and glory of the world. 

'A virgin is His mother, but His sire 
The Power of the Most High ; he shall ascend 
The throne hereditary, and bound His reign 
With earth's wide bounds, His glory with the heavens.'" 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 55 

tianity, then, has not been subjected to the humi- 
liation of being only embraced by the weak and 
ignorant of mankind ; it has called forth the 
plaudits of the greatest men that ever lived, and 
has done more by its own simple energy to 
augment the genius and to multiply the acquire- 
ments of the race, than all other systems of reli- 
gion and all other causes combined.* 

But I ask again, what have been the moral qua- 
lifications possessed by Christians to enable them 
to decide upon the validity of their own hopes ? 
Have they been men, in general, whose percep- 
tions have been blunted and vitiated by an irre- 
gular and profligate life ? or has not the very 
reverse of this been the case ? If two persons 
of equal intellect, but of extremely different 
moral habits, — the one devout, consistent, bene- 
volent; and the other proud, self-important, de- 
voted to pleasure, — should 'set themselves to 

* "If a map," observes the present Bishop of Chester, 
" could trace the real influence of the Gospel, it would also 
delineate the proportion of intelligence and active virtue. 
The measure of spiritual knowledge is also the measure 
of barbarism and of civilization, of mental stupidity, or 
mental illumination." — Evidences, Fourth Edition, 12mo, 
pp. 427, 428. 



56 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

ascertain the truth or falsehood of any system 
assuming to be a revelation from God — which 
of the two parties might be expected to be the 
more successful in the investigation, provided 
that the assumed revelation were genuine ? It 
cannot surely be denied that the advantages in 
favour of the man of correct moral feeling and 
habit would be immense. Nor can it be main- 
tained by any one in possession of sound reason, 
that a wrong state of mind and character will 
not materially influence the decisions of the un- 
derstanding, in reference to moral truth. Upon 
this principle it is that we enter our earnest 
protest against the flimsy dogma of modern infi- 
delity, that belief is, in all cases, a thing strictly 
involuntary. On the contrary, we submit, that 
in no case where belief is claimed on behalf of 
moral truth, can it be yielded in a state of mind 
fairly entitled to the appellation involuntary. 
That can never be involuntary which may either 
be prompted or retarded by the state of disposi- 
tion. Nothing is more obvious than that men 
may blind themselves to the light of truth, and 
stumble, as in the dark, at noon day. But who 



OF CHRISTIANITY, 57 

would say that that blindness is involuntary 
which is the result of a man's loving darkness 
rather than light because his deeds are evil ? 

Upon a full and impartial review of the moral 
character and habits of those who have truly 
embraced Christianity, we are disposed to abide 
by the conclusion, that their advantages for 
reaching truth have been astonishingly great. 
Compared with the leading advocates of Deism, 
they stand on a lofty eminence, from which, 
with a vision unclouded by the mists of prejudice 
and crime, they can discern the moral beauty 
and loveliness of that fair land which opens to 
their view in the territory of revealed truth.* 

If, then, the intellectual advantages of the 
Christian are fully equal to those of the infidel, and 
if his moral advantages are far superior, to what 
conclusion must such a fact conduct us ? Why, 
to this, that the Christian is much more likely to 
be right in embracing the gospel, than the sceptic 

* " Religion cannot exist," said Sir W alter Scott, 
" where immorality prevails, any more than a light can 
burn where the air is corrupted." — Life of Napoleon, vol. i. 
}3. 54. 



58 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

is in rejecting it. His judgment is not less to be 
respected, and his dispositions and habits are 
more in accordance with the dictates of what 
even natural conscience and pure deism would 
pronounce to be right. And do we on this 
account urge men to receive Christianity ? By 
no means. All we demand is, that they will 
give it a fair hearing, and that they will look on 
it with that respect which will dispose them to 
weigh well its divine evidence, and not rashly to 
dash from their parched lips the cup of salvation. 
We ask not that men should believe because 
others have believed; but that they would 
honestly inquire whether believers or sceptics 
are most worthy of imitation? The careful 
investigation of this question will generate a state 
of niind favourable to the claims of revelation, 
and will prompt the reasonable desire that the 
gospel may be true, 

I may here premise, that no man was ever in 
earnest to find out the truth of Christianity who 
did not make conscience of imploring God's 
direction and assistance in an inquiry upon which 
so much depends. If Christianity be not a re- 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 59 

relation from God, then has none ever been 
vouchsafed to the children of men; and if none 
has ever been vouchsafed, then are the whole 
race sunk in gross darkness as to the character of 
God, and the destinies of futurity. If Chris- 
tianity be a revelation from God, then is it trea- 
son against Heaven to reject its evidence, or to 
set light by the remedy which it prescribes for 
our fallen and guilty nature. Under these cir- 
cumstances, how necessary is it to ask of God 
that he would lead us, his erring children, into 
all truth, and that he would so far banish every 
unholy prejudice that our minds may be open to 
receive whatever bears upon it the stamp of a 
celestial origin. It is a mournful fact that this 
spirit of devotion seems an utter stranger to 
almost all writers of the sceptical class. They 
boast of their deism, and neglect one of its first 
and simplest lessons, — viz.,, the duty of an intel- 
ligent, but feeble and dependent creature seek- 
ing counsel of the great and merciful Being 
who formed him. 



60 



THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



CHAPTER II. 

SHEWING THAT THE EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIANITY IS 
OF SUCH A NATURE THAT IT ADMITS OF BEING 
BROUGHT HOME INDIVIDUALLY, WITH CONVINCING 
POWER, TO EVERY MAN'S BOSOM. 

It is never to be forgotten that those who are 
called to examine the divine pretensions of Chris- 
tianity are the very persons interested in its 
communications. To man it distinctly makes 
its appeal, and in him it proposes to effect that 
mighty renovation of which it speaks. Should 
it be true, then, to its own assumed character, it 
will undoubtedly verify its several claims in the 
personal consciousness of all its recipients. I 
choose to begin here, because I am satisfied that 
no man can sit dowm to investigate the truth of 
his Bible, w T ho does not stand in need of light on 
the subjects of w T hich it treats. Every man's 
conscience may suggest to him that he has 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 61 

offended against God, that he has violated, in 
innumerable instances, Ins own sense of right 
and wrong, and that there may be some fearful 
retribution awaiting transgressors in another and 
unknown state of existence. But whatever Rea- 
son may surmise on these subjects, she has no 
balm with which to soothe an anguished con- 
science, no system of propitiation by which to 
relieve a guilty and foreboding mind, no media- 
tor between the offended Majesty of Heaven and 
his erring creatures. It is Christianity alone 
which opens up a door of hope to an apostate 
race ; every thing besides is utter conjecture. 
Infidels may boast of the composure and satis- 
faction they feel in contemplating the issues of 
the present life ; but their exemption from anxious 
dread is but one instance out of many in which 
the voice of conscience is silenced by that spirit 
of utter and reckless scepticism, which on the 
one hand rejects a mass of well-authenticated 
evidence, and on the other professes firm belief 
and unshaken confidence in its own dogmas, 
without so much as a tittle of proof to support 
them. 

G 



62 



THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



The man, then, who examines Christianity in 
a right spirit, may expect to perceive, in its inti- 
mate bearing on his own case, that it is of God. 
If he is in that state of mind which is suitable to 
a rational creature anxious to know the will of 
God, he will find in Christianity what he can 
discover no where else. Is he conscious of sin 0 
it reveals to him its true character, traces it to 
its source, and points to its consequences. Is he 
the subject of legitimate dread and apprehension 
in prospect of standing before an offended God ? 
it tells him how his guilt may be effectually re- 
moved, and how the peace of an accusing con- 
science may be restored. Is he oppressed when- 
ever he thinks of the divine purity, and contrasts 
it with a nature ever prone to evil ? it proposes 
to subject him to a healing and remedial process, 
by which moral health is to be restored to his 
diseased soul, and by which he is to be taught to 
delight in God, and to aspire after his likeness. 
Is he inournfully sensible of the fact, that " all is 
vanity and vexation of spirit," and that nothing 
under the sun can satisfy the desires of a mind 
panting after immortality? it opens up to his 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



63 



view sources of never-ending delight, it brings 
him to the very fountain of all happiness, it 
shews him how his fondest expectations may be 
realized, it tells him how to delight in God, and 
how to draw near in acceptable worship to Him 
whom angels adore, and before whom the spirits 
of darkness flee in terror and dismay. 

It becomes every man who sets himself to the 
task of examining Christianity, to fix his attention 
on the following momentous inquiry : — " Is this 
professed revelation adapted to my actual neces- 
sities ? to my fears and hopes ? to the circum- 
stances by which I am surrounded ? and to the 
prospects which stretch before me?" If, upon 
minute inquiry, it is found to be thus adapted to 
our fallen state, it will surely carry along with it 
a striking demonstration of its divine origin ; and 
if, upon actual experiment, we find that the recep- 
tion of Christianity allays our guilty fears, gives 
peace to our troubled consciences, quenches the 
thirst of sin, inspires the hope of immortality, 
supplies motives for patient endurance, and sheds 
the lustre of moral loveliness and purity over 
the character in whom it dwells, then may we 



64 



THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



assure ourselves of the source whence it sprung, 
and then may we enter, with a full heart, into 
the meaning of the beloved disciple when he 
says, " He that believeth on the Son of God hath 
the witness in himself."* 

" I think,*' said the good and great Richard 
Baxter, " that in the hearing and reading of the 
Bible, God's spirit often so concurreth, as that 
the will itself should be touched with an internal 
gust and savour of the goodness contained in the 
doctrine, and at the same time the understanding 
with an internal irradiation, which breeds such 
a certain apprehension of the verity of it, as 
nature gives men of natural principles. And I 
am persuaded that this, increased by more ex- 
perience and love, doth hold most Christians 
faster to Christ than naked reasonings could do. 
And were it not for this, unlearned, ignorant 
persons were still in danger of apostacy by every 
subtle caviller that assaults them. And I be- 

* John v. 10. See also a discourse, by the Author, on 
" the Experimental Evidence of Christianity,'* included in 
a volume lately published by ministers connected with the 
Monthly Meeting, " On the Evidences of Christianity." 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



65 



lieve that all true Christians have this kind of 
internal knowledge from a suitableness of the 
truth and goodness of the gospel to their now 
quickened, illuminated, and sanctified souls.''* 

Let no one venture to reject Christianity, 
then, who has never made it the subject of his 
intense regard, in connexion with the exigencies 
which press upon his own condition and pros- 
pects. It can be but ill understood by the man 
who has never looked at it in its adaptation to 
his own case. It is an individual, as well as a 
general remedy ; and the true study of Christi- 
anity is the examination of its coincidence with 
the wants and wishes, the hopes and fears, which 
press upon every son and daughter of Adam. 
For the want of this close inspection of the indi- 
vidual aim of Christianity, it is to be feared that 
thousands either reject it, or are utterly in- 
different to it. But how contrary is all this to 
the spirit of true science, which rejects nothing, 
and admits nothing but upon actual experiment. 

* See Baxter's reply to Lord Herbert, entitled " More 
Reasons for the Christian Religion," 12mo. 1672, pp. 135, 
13(3. 



66 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

Let Christianity be fairly put to the test — let 
it be taken home with unhesitating confidence 
to the heart — let its divine remedies be applied 
to the distempered mind — let its proffered influ- 
ence be implored — let its true character as a 
restorative system be fully and impartially tried, 
and then, should it after all fail to impart peace, 
to heal the malady of the soul, to answer its 
own professed designs, let it be held up to that 
obloquy which it deserves. 

But where is the man who ever betook him- 
self to Christianity without finding it to be the 
refuge of his weary mind ? Who could ever, 
upon actual trial, charge it with a lack of faith- 
fulness to its own pretensions ? Who ever 
embraced its animating hopes without finding 
them productive of peace, and purity, and joy ? 
Who ever became a true Christian without feel- 
ing the self- evidencing power of the gospel ? 
Who ever believed on the Son of God without 
having proof, in his own mind, that the Bible is 
true ? Who ever made actual trial of Christi- 
anity without finding it to be the " wisdom of 
God, and the power of God/' to the salvation 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 67 

of his soul ? Who ever knew the truth as it is 
in Jesus without being made free by it from the 
thraldom of sin and the bondage of corruption ? 
The man who is a genuine believer is as fully 
conscious as he is of existence, that Christianity 
is no cunningly devised fable. It has established 
its throne in the deep-seated convictions of his 
heart. He has felt the transformation it has 
wrought : " old things are passed away ; be- 
hold, all things are become new."* His entire 
character has been favourably affected by it. 
Upon his once gloomy path it has shed the light 
of immortality, — it has taught him to " rejoice 
even in tribulation," f — it has changed all the 
aspects of life, by throwing over them the hues 
of eternity, — it has conferred on him a reality of 
happiness which the whole creation had no 
power of imparting. In his own person he be- 
holds a monument of the truth and excellence 
of Christianity, which forbids him for ever to 
doubt. By other evidences, indeed, his faith is 
confirmed; but in his peace of mind, in that 



* 2 Cor. v. 17. 



f Rom. v. 3—5, xii. 12. 



68 



THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



" hope which is full of immortality/' and in the 
heavenward bearing of his once earthly cha- 
racter, he is enabled to feel that Christianity is 
no " cunningly devised fable." 

Having briefly looked at what may be re- 
garded as the experimental evidence which Chris- 
tianity is capable of planting in every man's 
bosom, we may now advance to other parts of 
this momentous subject. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



69 



CHAPTER III. 

CONTAINING A BRIEF SURVEY OF THOSE BRANCHES 
OF EVIDENCE WHICH IT IS PROPER TO URGE UPON 
THE ATTENTION OF THOSE WHO HAVE NOT AS YET 
YIELDED UP THEIR MINDS TO THE DIVINE AU- 
THORITY AND TRANSFORMING POWER OF THE 
GOSPEL. 

Some of those evidences may be traced in the 
internal character of Christianity itself, and 
others in those outward attestations by which 
Divine Providence has demonstrated the fact of 
its celestial origin. As I am fully convinced of 
the self- verifying power of the religion of Jesus 
Christ, I think it w^ell to begin with the first of 
these branches of evidence, that no one may, 
with truth, imagine that we shrink from a 
thorough investigation of the internal -structure 
and actual tendencies of our Holy Faith.* 

* I do not think, judging from the manner in which 
infidels themselves have written, that the most successful 



70 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



SECTION I. 

THE INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

When the subject of internal evidence has at 
any time deeply engaged my thoughts, I have 
proposed to myself the following question : — 
" What is the most wonderful, and at the same 
time the most unaccountable, object which pre- 
sents itself to our notice in a careful perusal of 
the New Testament Scriptures ?" This ques- 
tion has always drawn forth one simple answer — 
the character of Jesus of Nazareth. In examin- 
ing the internal evidence of Christianity, look — 

method of assailing them is to begin with a discussion of 
the external evidences of the gospel. From their general 
ignorance of the character of Revelation itself, and from its 
marked adaptation, when examined, to produce conviction 
of its divine origin, I rather hesitate as to the propriety of 
demanding the belief of a sceptic upon the mere presenta- 
tion of its external credentials. Besides, there is scarcely 
any object to be achieved by this mode of procedure, which 
is not equally well answered by the method of arguing the 
truth of scripture from an examination of its own contents. 
Assuredly the divine authority of the heavenly messengers 
may be verified as much by what they say, as by any other 
circumstance whatsoever ; and if the real power of convic- 
tion lies in their message, it seems but right to try its 
efficacy. 



OF CHRISTIANITY, 71 

1. At the moral character of its Great Founder. 
Let that character be fairly investigated, and I 
am greatly mistaken if it will not breed a con- 
viction that Christianity must be from heaven. 
That such a person lived, and suffered, and died 
in the land of Judea, is admitted equally by 
heathen and Jewish writers, and requires no 
formal proof, therefore, to establish the fact. 
Josephus, Suetonius, Tacitus, and Pliny the 
Younger, place beyond all reasonable doubt the 
fact of his existence, and the period of his life, 
ministry, and death. 

But what an object of astonishment and 
wonder do we behold in " the man Christ 
Jesus!" Trace the son of Mary and Joseph 
from the manger at Bethlehem to the cross on 
Calvary, and what a combination do you witness 
of all that is innocent and pure and benevolent ! 
Here is wisdom the most profound in the ab- 
sence of ail the ordinary means of acquiring it. 
Here is a Being in whom all the social and 
relative affections are not only seen to advan- 
tage, but in absolute perfection. Here are 
humility and dignity perfectly combined ;— the 



72 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

loftiness of moral excellence, without a single 
approximation to the feeling of contempt for 

others. Here is a sanctity of character which 
never yielded to a single temptation, and never 
deviated from the path of rectitude in a single 
instance, combined at the same time with a con- 
descension and mercy which never spurned the 
miserable, and never frowned on the trembling 
penitent conscious of his guilt and pleading for 
forgiveness. Here is one who never resented 
an injury, and never forgot a kindness, — who 
never thought of an enemy, but to bless him, or 
of a faithless friend, but to pity and forgive him. 
Here is one whose days were devoted to the 
exercises of active benevolence, and whose 
nights were spent in communion with his God, — 
who sought no rew ard of all his generosity, — who 
wept tears of anguish over the approaching fate 
of those who persecuted him at every step of his 
existence with unabating cruelty, — and who 
spent his last breath in praying for his guilty and 
relentless murderers. Whence such a character 
as this ? Was it from earth or heaven ? If 
from earth, then where can w T e look for its great 



OF CHRISTIANITY, 73 

archetype ? Not, surely, in the Gentile world ; 
for it infinitely surpassed even the ideal models 
which were laid down by the purest and most 
enlightened of its philosophers. Xot in the 
Jewish world, for even its most cherished patri- 
archs were chargeable with innumerable imper- 
fections ; and in the days of Jesus of Nazareth, 
the great body of the nation were peculiarly 
degraded, both as it respected the acquirements 
of the understanding, and the habits of the life 
and conduct. Whence, then, this mysterious 
and wonderful personage — this Being so unlike 
all the generations of men who had preceded 
him or who have followed after him, yet clothed 
in a human form, possessed of human sym- 
pathies, and subject to human woes? Xo 
wonder that Rousseau, in his exquisite and well- 
known contrast between Socrates and Christ, 
should feel himself constrained to remark, that 
" the inventor of such a personage would be a 
more astonishing character than the hero/"* " Is 
it possible,'' said he, speaking of the Bible and 



* Works, vol. v. pp. 215— 218. 

n 



74 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

of the character of Christ, " is it possible that a 
book, at once so simple and sublime, should be 
merely the work of man? Is it possible that 
the sacred personage, whose history it contains,, 
should himself be a mere man ? Do we find 
that he assumed the tone of an enthusiast or 
ambitious sectary? What sweetness, what 
purity in his manner ! What an affecting 
gracefulness in his delivery ! What sublimity 
in his maxims ! What profound wisdom in his 
discourses ! What presence of mind, what sub- 
limity, what truth hi his replies! How great 
the command over his passions ! Where is the 
man, where is the philosopher, who could so 
live and so die without weakness and with- 
out ostentation ? When Plato described his 
imaginary good man, loaded with all the shame 
of guilt, yet meriting the highest rewards of 
virtue, he described exactly the character of 
Jesus Christ : the resemblance was so striking 
that all the fathers perceived it." Yet tin's was 
the strange and unhappy man who, through the 
wickedness and pride of his heart, declared, u I 
cannot believe the gospel. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



75 



Upon no correct or reasonable supposition 
whatever but that the Lord Jesus was the very 
person he assumed to be, the person whom the 
Christian Scriptures describe him to be, viz., 
the Messiah of the Church, and " God manifest 
in the flesh," can we account for the solitary 
and awful grandeur* of a character " holy, 

* Bishop Sherlock, in contrasting the character of Jesus 
Christ with that of Mahomet, has, in one of the most beauti- 
ful personifications in our language, finely touched the argu- 
ment for the truth of Christianity here contended for. "Go," 
says he, "to your Natural Religion; lay before her Mahomet 
and his disciples arrayed in armour and in blood, riding in 
triumph over the spoils of thousands and tens of thousands 
who fell by his victorious sword; shew her the cities which he 
set in flames, the countries which he ravaged and destroyed, 
and the miserable distress of all the inhabitants of the earth. 
When she has viewed him in this scene, carry him into his 
retirements. Shew her the prophet's chamber, his concu- 
bines and wives ; let her see his adultery, and hear him 
allege revelation and his divine commission to justify his 
lust and his oppression. 

" When she is tired with this prospect, then shew her 
the blessed Jesus, humble and meek, doing good to all the 
sons of men, patiently instructing both the ignorant and 
perverse ; let her see him in his most retired privacy ; let 
her follow him to the mountain, and hear his devotions and 
supplications to God. Carry her to his table to see his poor 
fare, and hear his heavenly discourse. Let her see him 
injured, but not provoked ; let her attend him to the tri- 
bunals, and consider the patience with which he endured 
the scoffs and reproaches of his enemies. Lead her to his 



76 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

harmless, undenled, separate from sinners, and 
made higher than the heavens/"* "who did no 
sin/'t and "who knew no sin.'"£ 

The Rev. Charles Bridges, in his excellent 
Memoir of Miss M. I. Graham, (and which 
I take the libertv of strongly recommending 
to the notice of the young,) who had been con- 
siderably tinctured with infidelity, states that 
the character of Christ, as a proof of the cre- 
dibility of the Christian revelation, arrested her 
peculiar attention. A minute scrutiny of his 
spotless life was most satisfactory in its result. 
" The more," said she, "I studied this divine 
character, — the more I grew up, as it were, into 
its simplicity and holiness, the more my under- 
standing was enabled to shake off those slavish 

cross, and let her view him in the agony of death, and hear 
his last prayer for his persecutors — 1 Father, forgive them, 
for they know not what they do.' 

"When Natural Religion has viewed both, ask — which is 
the prophet of God ? But her answer we have already had 
when she saw part of this scene through the eyes of the cen- 
turion who attended at the cross ; by him she spake and 
said, * Truly this man was the Son of God.' " — See Sher- 
lock's Sermons. 



* Heb. vii. 26. 



f 1 Pet. ii. 22. ± 2 Cor. v. 21. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 77 

and sinful prejudices which had hindered me 
from appreciating its excellence. Truly, his 
words were dearer to me than my necessary 
food. He was my 6 All in All/ I did not want 
to have any knowledge, goodness, or strength, 
independently of him. I had rather be 6 ac- 
cepted in the Beloved,'' than received (had that 
been possible) upon the score of my own merits. 
I had rather walk leaning upon his arm than 
have a stock of strength given me to perform 
the journey alone. To learn, as a fool, of 
Christ, — this was better to me than to have the 
knowledge of an angel to find out things myself. 

" From that moment,'" she adds, " I ceased to 
stumble at the doctrines of the cross. The 
doctrines of Scripture, which had before ap- 
peared to me an inexplicable mass of confusion 
and contradictions, were now written on my 
understanding with the clearness of a sun-beam. 
Above all, that once abhorred doctrine of the 
Divinity of Christ was become exceeding pre- 
cious to me. The external evidences of Chris- 
tianity, though I now perceived all their force, 
were no longer necessary to my conviction. 



78 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

From that time," she concludes, "I have con- 
tinued to c sit at the feet of Jesus, and to hear his 
word/ taking him for my teacher and guide 
in things temporal as well as spiritual. He has 
found in me a disciple so slow of comprehen- 
sion, so prone to forget his lessons, and to act hi 
opposition to his commands, that were he not 
infinitely 6 meek and lowly of heart/ he would 
long ago have cast me off in anger, but he still 
continues to bear with me, and to give me 6 line 
upon line, and precept upon precept / and I am 
certain that he 6 will never leave me, nor forsake 
me,' for though I am variable and inconsistent, 
< with Him there is no variableness, neither sha- 
dow of turning/ "* 

Such was the effect produced upon this intel- 
ligent lady's mind by an examination of the 
moral character of the Lord Jesus, and I am 
satisfied that a similar result will follow in every 
instance the adoption of the same course. x\t 
least we do claim from infidels, if they will still 
continue to reject the truth, that they furnish us, 



* Page 17—19. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



79 



upon their own principles, with some reasonable 
account of the source whence sprung the ineffa- 
ble purity and benevolence of the Son of God. 
Till they have accounted for his unequalled cha- 
racter they are chargeable with the utmost levity 
and irrationality in persisting in their unbelief.* 

2. Contemplate, as another internal evidence 
of the divine origin of Christianity, the unrivalled 
sublimity of its diction. 

Compared with the rich treasures of the Old 
and New Testament Scriptures, all other compo- 
sitions must retire into the shade. Rousseau must 
have felt this conviction most powerfully when 
he made the following reluctant but important 
concession: — " I will confess,"' said he, " that 
the majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with 
admiration, as the purity of the gospel hath its 
influence upon my heart. Peruse the works of 
our philosophers with all their pomp of diction ; 

* See a very able Discourse on the Character of Christ, 
as an evidence of the Christian Religion, by the Rev. W. 
"Walford, in a volume lately published by the Independent 
ministers of London on the Evidences of Christianity. See 
also the present Bishop of Calcutta's Seventeenth Lecture 
on the Evidences, &c. 



80 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



how mean, how contemptible are they, compared 
with the Scriptures !" 

The opinion of Rousseau is confirmed by that 
of men vastly his superiors in learning and virtue. 
Sir William Jones, than whom few of the human 
race have been distinguished by a more laudable 
thirst after knowledge, has penned the following 
striking, but just eulogium, on the style and man- 
ner of the sacred writers : — " The collection of 
tracts which we call, from their excellence, The 
Scriptures, contain, independently of a divine 
origin, more true sublimity, more exquisite 
beauty, purer morality, more important history, 
and finer strains of poetry and eloquence, than 
could be collected within the same compass from 
all other books that were ever composed in any 
age or in any idiom. The two parts of which 
the Scriptures consist are connected by a chain 
of compositions which bear no resemblance in 
form or style to any that can be produced from 
the stores of Grecian, Indian, Persian, or even 
Arabian learning. The antiquity of those com- 
positions no man doubts, and the unstrained ap- 
plication of them to events long subsequent to 



OF CHRISTIANITY, 



81 



their publication, is a solid ground of belief that 
they are genuine predictions, and consequently 
inspired." 

The celebrated Mr. Addison, in discoursing on 
the same subject, says, "After perusing the book 
of Psalms, let a judge of the beauties of poetry 
read a literal translation of Horace or Pindar, 
and he will find in these two last such an 
absurdity and confusion of style, with such a 
comparative poverty of imagination, as will make 
him sensible of the vast superiority of Scripture 
style." 

If we examine carefully the pathetic story of 
Joseph and his brethren ; the songs of Moses at 
the Red Sea, and on the borders of the promised 
land ; the sublime narrative of the giving of the 
Law from Mount Sinai ; the celebrated prophecy 
of Balaam ; the prayer of Solomon at the dedi- 
cation of the Temple ; the visions of the Jewish 
prophets, particularly those of Isaiah ; the odes 
of Jesse's son ; the matchless sermon on the 
Mount ; the public appeals of the apostles before 
heathen tribunals; and the mystic symbols of 
the Apocalypse, we cannot but be struck and 



82 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

awed with the unrivalled diction, the surpassing 
imagery, and the lofty conceptions of the inspired 
writers. Let all the other books of antiquity be 
produced ; let the classic page disclose its richest 
stores ; let the entire mass of apocryphal writings 
undergo the strictest scrutiny ; let Egypt, and 
Greece, and Arabia bring forth the proudest 
monuments of their genius ; let the most dazzling 
passages of the Koran be separated from the 
mass of its absurdities; let all ages and all 
nations vie with the writers of the Jewish and 
Christian Scriptures, and it will be seen, by a 
judge of the most inferior grade, that no argu- 
ment can be held for a single moment as to the 
comparative grandeur of the book commonly 
called the bible, that it throws the whole round 
of other productions into the shade, and that it 
is written altogether in a style and manner which 
admits of no successful rival or counterfeit. 

Now, what is the force of this particular 
argument ? Why, the bible was written by the 
posterity of Abraham — -a people proverbial for 
their destitution of all mental refinement, and 
who, in their secular history, have displayed a 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 83 

marked inferiority to all the other nations of 
antiquity. The conclusion then is, if the wonder- 
ful volume known by the name of the bible was 
verily the production of several Jews, who lived 
in different ages of the world, they must have 
written under a direction and an impulse more 
than human — they must have written under the 
guidance of that Spirit, to whom they themselves 
trace their loftiest and humblest inspirations. I 
feel that this conclusion is sound and rational. 
Try the bible by any other Jewish production of 
any age whatsoever, try it by any work that has 
ever emanated from the pen or the genius of 
man, and the feeling must resistlessly take 
possession of the mind, that the words winch 
God speaks, " They are spirit, and they are life."* 
Unlike every other document that has been 
handed down from a remote antiquity, the 
volume of inspiration carries along with it, in 
the unutterable dignity and sublimity which 
pervade all its parts, an evidence of the source 
whence it sprung, — an evidence which could not 



* John vi. 63. 



84 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

fail to strike the mind even of an untutored 
savage, who might meet with it accidentally in 
some vast desert, and who had no living teacher 
to unfold to him the character or merciful designs 
of the God whom it reveals. How can men of 
taste, and genius, and literature, remain blind to 
this argument ! The very poetry, the lofty and 
well sustained imagery, the unparalleled diction 
of the sacred volume, will rise up in judgment 
against them, inasmuch as then- dislike to the 
truths of revelation has led many of them to 
overlook qualities which would have commanded 
their profound est veneration had they been able 
to discern them in a single uninspired produc- 
tion. It may be added here, that the few 
infidels who have written in commendation of 
the style of the inspired writers have totally 
neglected to account for the commanding and 
indubitable superiority of the Scriptures to all 
other compositions. Upon any hypothesis but 
that of their divine origin the attempt must 
utterly fail. My only wish is, that intelligent 
men would make the honest effort to satisfy 
their own convictions that the bible might have 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 85 

been written by such persons as the Jewish 
patriarchs and the Fishermen of Galilee, without 
any divine afflatus ; when such an attempt has 
been made by them, I am satisfied that, whether 
they are led to embrace the Holy Scriptures as 
the word of God or not, they will be compelled 
to admit the fact that, upon all the canons of 
literary criticism ever admitted, there is nothing 
whatever to warrant the idea that the bible has 
been furnished to mankind in the same way, and 
on the same principles as other documents of a 
remote antiquity. When men are brought thus 
far there is great reason to hope that they will 
look with some measure of devoutness and 
integrity at the whole question of Christian 
evidence. 

3. Let the high standard of the morality of 
Christianity be examined with impartiality, and 
it cannot fail to arouse attention to its extraordi- 
nary claims. For though the uncompromising 
sanctity of revealed truth is among the chief 
reasons which induce men to cavil at its 
evidence, and secretly to reject its authority, 
it is, nevertheless, one of the most powerful 
i 



86 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



and indubitable proofs of its proceeding from 
the fountain of infinite purity and benevo- 
lence,* 

On this subject the celebrated John Locke 
has said, " The morality of the gospel doth so far 
excel that of all other books, that to give a man 
full knowledge of true morality, I would send 
him to no other book than the New Testament." 
And, verily, if we examine all the writings of the 
most enlightened and virtuous of the heathen 
world, and compare or rather contrast them with 
the writings of inspiration, we shall be fully 
satisfied of the accuracy of this great man's 
opinion. That there are fine passages on certain 
branches of morals, in some of the writings of 
pagan philosophers and poets, we do not attempt 
to deny ; but the great question is, what were 
their writings as a whole, and what were the 
views of morality generally entertained and acted 
upon among their disciples ? Is it not notorious 

* Lord Bolingbroke himself has said, that " The gospel 
is in all cases one continued lesson of the strictest mo- 
rality, of justice, of benevolence, and of universal charity." 
Works, vol. v. p. 138. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



87 



that self-murder,* that crimes which admit of 
no description,^ that theft, that sacrilege, that 
fornication, that adultery.;: that revenge, that 
pride, that dissimulation in the worship of the 
gods,§ that habitual disregard of the duty of 
prayer, ij and that awful irreverence for the name 
of the Great Supreme, are taught, with an un- 
blushing effrontery, by some of the chief patrons 
and guardians of pagan morality? Wlio does 
not know that some of the most brilliant passages, 

* Seneca thus pleads for self-murder : "If thy mind be 
melancholy and in misery, thou mayst put a period to this 
wretched condition ; wherever thou lookest, there is an end 
to it. See that precipice ! there thou mayest have liberty. 
Seest thou that sea, that river, that well ? liberty is at the 
bottom of it ; that little tree ? freedom hangs upon it. 
Thy own neck, thy own throat, may be a refuge to thee 
from such servitude ; yea, every vein of thy body."' Deira, 
lib. iii. cap. 15. p. m. 319. Plutarch, and Cato, and Brutus, 
and Cassius, and Cicero, all agree to justify the crime of 
self-destruction. See Plutarch's Life of Cato. 

t Juvenal, Satyr ii. ver. 10. Diog. Laertus, vol. i. pp. 
m. 165, 166. 

f ^Millar's History of the Propagation of Christianity, 
vol. i. pp. 63 — 65. 

§ Epictetus bids his disciples " temporise and worship 
the gods after the fashion of their country." Enchiridion, 
cap. 38. p. m. 56. See A. Fuller's "Works, vol. i. p. 37. 

Pythagoras forbids prayer to God, "because," says he, 
M you know not what is convenient." 



88 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE. 

both of the Greek and Latin classics, cannot be 
read by ingenuous youth without involving the 
risk of a total downfal of their morals ?* We 
shall find no counterpart, indeed, to the writings 
of heathen antiquity, unless we turn to the 
licentious and utterly reckless productions of 
modern infidelity, in which every thing like dis- 
guise is laid aside, and men are taught to do, 
without restraint, whatever their own vile incli- 
nations may dictate. 

How unlike the imperfect and often polluted 
writings of men is the system of morality laid 
down and detailed in the several books of the 
Old and New Testament ! Let any man devote 
a reasonable period to the examination of the 
spirit and moral precepts of Christianity, and he 
will be compelled to admit its unsullied purity, 
its coincidence with all our natural notions of 
right and wrong, and its indubitable tendency to 
improve human intercourse, and to constitute 
mankind a community of brothers. Did all men 

* Is it not a heavy disgrace that in Christian countries 
so much of the time of youth should be spent poring over 
the vitiated pages of the ancient classics. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 89 

believe and obey the dictates of Revelation, what 
a mighty and favourable revolution would be 
wrought in the entire frame -work of society ! 
What habit of known evil does it not proscribe ? 
What irregular passion does it not forbid ? 
What acknowledged virtue does it not enforce ? 
What kindly or generous affection does it not 
inculcate ? How lofty is its standard of action ! 
Though self-interest is not and cannot be ex- 
cluded from a system so adapted to the nature of 
man, yet it is only permitted to occupy a subor- 
dinate place in the morality of the gospel. There 
men are urged to endure and act " as seeing Him 
who is invisible;'** there we are commanded to 
do no act of beneficence to be seen of men;f 
there the honour of God and the good of others 
are the objects at which they are called habitually 
to aim;% there the surface morality of the world is 
treated with scorn, and a right state of the thoughts 
and affections is imperatively demanded ;§ there 
meekness, and humility, and condescension, 

* Heb. xi. 27. t Matt. vL 1—4. 

| Matt. xxii. So — 40. Luke x. 27. 
§ Matt. xv. 19. xxiii. 25—27. 

I 2 



90 



THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



are represented as the true path to greatness ;* 
there haughtiness and pride are associated with all 
that is mean and worthless ;f there an assuming 
and lofty air is forbidden even in the ordinary 
intercourses of social life there covetousness is 
branded as idolatry, § hatred as murder, || and 
hidden lust as adultery;^ there every species of 
resentment is absolutely prohibited ;** there the 
refusal to forgive an injury is described as an 
effectual barrier in the way of the exercise of 
divine mercy ;j-f there all detraction, all back- 
biting, all evil speaking, all envy, all malice, all 
circumvention, are shewn to be inconsistent with 
the hope of eternal life, and the state of accept- 
ance through a Redeemer.:^ 

There is indeed one grand peculiarity belong- 
ing to the morality of Christianity, which dis- 
tinguishes it from that of every other system, 
viz. — the sublime and all-subduing character of its 

* Matt, xxiii. 6. 
f Mark xii. 38—40. Luke xx. 46. 
| Luke xiv. 7—11. § Col. iii. 5. 

|| Matt. v. 21—26. 1 John iii. 15. 
% Matt, xxiii. 28. 
** Matt. v. 38—42. Rom. xii. 17—21. 
tt Matt. vi. 14, 15. $$ 1 Pet. ii. 1—3. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



91 



motives. Many useful virtues were enjoined by 
the Gentile philosophers, but they had no para- 
mount considerations by which to ensure obe- 
dience to their own precepts ; they had no moral 
engine of sufficient power to urge a sinful race 
onward in the path of obedience. Hence their 
code of morals was almost a dead letter, little 
regarded by themselves, and totally overlooked 
by the mass. But who can glance for a moment 
at the morality of the Bible without coming into 
contact with those mighty and heart-stirring 
considerations which are fitted to rouse all the 
sensibilities of human nature, and to subdue into 
willing and grateful obedience the most stubborn 
and rebellious of the race ? Let the following 
examples of the class of motives referred to 
suffice : — " Herein is love, not that we loved 
God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to 
be the propitiation for our sins."* " Let all 
bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, 
and evil-speaking, be put away from you, with 
all malice : and be ye kind one to another, ten- 



* 1 John iv. 10. 



92 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

der-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God 
for Christ's sake hath forgiven you! y% "Come 
out from among them, and be ye separate, saith 
the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing ; and 
I will receive you, and will be a father unto 
you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, 
saith the Lord Almighty. 99 f " God so loved the 
world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that 
whosoever believeth in him should not perish, 
but have everlasting life. "J " Beloved, if God 
so loved us, we ought to love one another.'^ 
" Let nothing be done through strife or vain- 
glory ; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem 
other better than themselves." || " Ye are 
bought with a price, therefore glorify God in 
your body and in your spirit, which are his."^[ 
" The love of Christ constraineth us ; because 
we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were 
all dead : and that he died for all, that they 
which live should not henceforth live unto them- 



* Eph. iv. 31. 
f 2 Cor. vi. 17. $ John iii. 16. 

§ 1 John iv. 11. 
|| Philip, ii. 3. % 1 Cor. vi. 20. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



93 



selves, but unto him that died for them and that 
rose again.* 

How mean and poverty-stricken are the mo- 
tives of all other systems when compared with the 
religion of Christ Jesus ! A book which founds 
its code of morals upon such considerations can 
never surely be the production of man. In 
the wide range of his efforts there is nothing 
analagous. The fair inference, therefore, is, that 
a greater than man speaks to us in the living 
oracles. 

It may be safely affirmed, that if Christianity 
were cordially embraced as the religion of man- 
kind, it would renovate the entire fabric of society . 
It is impossible for any one to say advisedly, 
or with truth, that one immoral habit, or one 
irregular thought or desire, receives a sanction 
from the writings of Christ and his apostles. 
The Christian may often have reason, through 
the infirmity and corruption of his fallen 
nature, to blush on account of the very imperfect 
manner in which he acts out his great principles ; 



* 2 Cor. v. 14. 



94 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

he may often have occasion to mourn that in 
him the religion of Jesus has such an unworthy 
representative ; but he can at all times refer with 
exultation and triumph to the glorious charter of 
his hopes ; and while he sees that " the wicked- 
ness of man upon earth is great/' he may un- 
hesitatingly assure himself that the total neglect 
or but partial reception of Christianity is the sole 
cause of the crime and wretchedness which 
abound. The enemies of revelation themselves 
being judges, what can they predicate of its pro- 
bable tendency on the race but unmixed good ? 
Must they not own that all the moral evil which 
abounds in the earth is in direct violation of the 
doctrines and precepts of revealed truth ? Must 
they not, however reluctantly, concede, that the 
principles of deism are feeble and powerless as a 
system of moral renovation, compared with the 
high and holy dictates of the Gospel? Who 
does not perceive that if a time should ever 
arrive when all men shall give heed to the 
words of Christ, that that will be the precise 
period of the world's deliverance from the cruel 
vassalage of sin? "Men would then," to use 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 95 

the words of an eminent divine, " universally do 
justice, speak truth, shew mere}', exercise mutual 
forgiveness, follow after peace, bridle their appe- 
tites and passions, and lead sober, righteous, and 
godly lives. Murders, wars, bitter contentions, 
cruel oppressions, and unrestrained licentiousness, 
would no more desolate the world, and fill it 
with misery ; but righteousness, goodness, and 
truth would bless the earth with a felicity ex- 
ceeding all our present conceptions. This is, no 
doubt, the direct tendency of the scriptural doc- 
trines, precepts, motives, and promises : nothing 
is wanting to remedy the state of the world, and 
to fit men for the worship and felicity of heaven, 
but that they should believe and obey the Bible. 
x\nd if many enormous crimes have been com- 
mitted under the colour of zeal for Christianity, 
this only proves the depravity of man's heart; 
for the Scripture, soberly understood, most ex- 
pressly forbids such practices ; and men do not 
act thus because they duly regard the Bible, but 
because they will not believe and obey it."* 



* See Scott's Essays, vol. ii. of his works, p. 21. 



96 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

Now the argument for the divine origin of 
Christianity arising from its transcendent mo- 
rality, may be viewed in various lights. In the 
first place, how comes it to pass, that of all the 
religions which have sought to obtain the suffrages 
of mankind, that of Jesus of Nazareth is incom- 
parably the most pure and benevolent in its 
tendency ? How comes it to pass, moreover, 
that among a rude people, such as were the 
Jews, there should have arisen a system of faith 
and worship, which, for grandeur of conception 
and sanctity of character, outstrips all the other 
records of time ? Is there not in this very cir- 
cumstance a presumption of the highest order in 
favour of the divine origin of Christianity ? 

But supposing, in the second place, that the 
apostles of our Lord were chargeable with the 
crime of dexterously imposing a false religion 
upon mankind, how happens it that they set 
themselves with such zeal and ardour to oppose 
the prejudices and preconceived notions of their 
countrymen ? How happens it that they took the 
very method the least likely to conciliate their 
good opinion, and to secure their hearty ap- 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 97 

proval ? How happens it that in their system 
of morality they not only struck a death blow at 
the pride and hypocrisy of their own nation, but 
insisted on a purity of heart and life which they 
knew must expose them to the hatred and de- 
rision of all mankind ? Upon a mere human 
calculation they adopted a method which could 
only issue in a perfect faihue. Had they flat- 
tered the depravity of man ; had they introduced 
a scheme which winked at any of his corruptions ; 
had they imitated the subsequent conduct of the 
False Prophet ; had they promised to their dis- 
ciples a life of ease and sensual indulgence ; had 
they exhibited in their own history an exemption 
from poverty, reproach, persecution, and death ; 
in a word, had there been any one thing in the 
scheme of doctrine they taught to secure the 
esteem and to call forth the approbation of a 
corrupt and vitiated state of society, we might 
then have been left to suspect that they had 
artfully constructed a system to suit the depraved 
taste of mankind, and to raise themselves to 
notoriety by pandering to the vices of human 
nature. But when the very reverse of this is the 

K 



98 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

case ; when the morality of the Gospel is so 
lofty and unbending as to surrender none of its 
claims to meet the prejudices either of Jews or 
Gentiles ; when it is so pre-eminent as to stand 
forth, in solitary grandeur, amidst the religions 
of all ages and all nations ; when it is found to 
embody every quality which is fitted to diffuse 
peace, and justice, and benevolence among man- 
mankind ; when it is impossible to detect in it 
a single precept which would not elevate the 
character of man and augment all his personal 
and relative enjoyments, what ought any thought- 
ful or considerate mind to conclude respecting it, 
but that it is the offspring of the Fountain of all 
Purity, and that it has been vouchsafed by Him 
in mercy to heal the distempers and redress the 
miseries of our fallen race ? 

I conclude this chapter in the words of one 
who cannot be suspected of any undue partiality 
to the Christian faith, of one who, unhappily for 
himself, did not allow the convictions of his 
judgment to rule his decisions or to form his 
character : — 

"The Gospel, that divine book, the only one 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



99 



necessary to a Christian, and the most useful of 
all to the man who may not be one, only re- 
quires reflection upon it, to impress the mind 
with love for its author, and resolution to fulfil 
his precepts. Virtue never spoke in gentler 
terms; the profoundest wisdom was never ut- 
tered with greater energy, or more simplicity. 
It is impossible to rise from the reading of it 
without a feeling of moral improvement. Look 
at the books of the philosophers, with all their 
pomp ; how little they are compared with this ! 
Shall we say that the history of the Gospel is a 
pure fiction ? This is not the style of fiction ; 
and the history of Socrates, which nobody 
doubts, rests upon less evidence than that of 
Jesus Christ. After all, this is but shifting the 
difficulty ; not answering it. The supposi- 
tion, that several persons had united to fabri- 
cate this book, is more inconceivable than that 
one person should have supplied the subject of it. 
The spirit which it breathes, the morality which 
it inculcates, could never have been the inven- 
tion of Jewish authors; and the gospel pos- 
sesses characters of truth so striking, so perfectly 



100 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



inimitable, that the inventor would be a more 
astonishing object than the hero/'* 

Let attention be devoted — 

4. To the coincidence of Christianity with the 
character of God, and the actual condition of man."f 

* J. J. Rousseau, vol. xxxvi. of his works, p. 36, Ed. 
Paris, 1788—1793. 

" L'evangile, ce divin livre, le seul n£cessaire a un Chre- 
tien, et le plus utile de tous a quiconque ne le serait pas, 
n'a besoin que d'etre medite pour porter dans l'ame 
l'amour de son auteur, et la volonte* d'accomplir ses pre- 
ceptes. Jamais la vertu n'a parle un si doux langage ; 
jamais la plus profonde sagesse ne s'est exprimee avec tant 
d'energie et de simplicity. On n'en quitte point la lecture 
sans se sentir meilleur qu'auparavant. Voyez les livres des 
philosophes avec toute leur pompe : qu'ils sont petits aupres 
de celui-la ! Dirons nous que l'histoire de l'evangile est in- 
ventee aplaisir ? Ce n'est pas ainsi qu'on invente ; et les faits 
de Socrate, dont personne ne doute, sont moins attestes que 
ceux de Jesus Christ. Au fond, c'est reculer la difficulte 
sans la detruire. II seroit plus inconcevable que plusieurs 
hommes d'accord eussent fabrique ce livre, qu'il ne Test 
qu'un seul en ait fourni le sujet. Jamais les auteurs Juiss 
n'eussent trouve ni ce ton ni cette morale ; et l'evangile a 
des caracteres de verite si frappans, si parfaitement inimi- 
tables, que l'inventeur en seroit plus £tonnant que le 
heros." — See Dr. J. P. Smith's admirable answer to a 
printed paper entitled " Manifesto of the Christian Evi- 
dence Society." 

f The Author is greatly indebted, in this part of his 
essay, to a work entitled " Remarks on the Internal Evi- 
dence for the Truth of Revealed Religion" By Thomas 
Erskine, Esq., Advocate. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 101 

There is a marked tendency in the human 
mind to trace results to some adequate cause. 
Hence our dissatisfaction in the mere perception 
of facts which, hi our present state of knowledge, 
we cannot account for ; and hence also the rest- 
less effort made by us to discover some principle of 
causation sufficient to produce the phenomena 
beheld. The revolutions of the heavenly bodies 
must impress every one endowed with reason 
that there is some mighty impulse to which 
they are all obedient ; and the feeling we have 
of the existence of such an impulse has roused 
that inquiry into the laws of the material uni- 
verse which has led to all the discoveries of 
modern science, and which has enabled us to 
trace, in the one pervading law of gravitation, 
the reason of certain revolutions and appear- 
ances, which without such an application of the 
human faculties must have been hid in perpetual 
obscurity. 

Xor is the tendency in man to reason from 
effects to causes the only one discoverable in the 
examination of what may be called his mental 
instincts. It is obvious that he is equally prone 
k 2 



102 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

to reason from causes to effects; so that when 
he has satisfied himself as to the existence of a 
particular cause, and has acquired some know- 
ledge of the mode in which it operates, he is 
prepared to concede that other effects may be 
attributed to it besides those which he has 
already discovered, provided they are in no 
way inconsistent with the facts and relations 
now perceived. 

Now, the tendencies thus described will be 
found equally to manifest themselves in refer- 
ence to mental and moral science, as in reference 
to the phenomena of the material universe. It 
is to these laws of our nature that we are in- 
debted for many of those inductions by which 
we are enabled to judge of the characters and 
actions of men, and to predicate what may or 
may not be reasonable to anticipate in certain 
given circumstances. 

Apply these general principles to the investi- 
gation of the subject in hand. The Bible is a 
book professing to come from heaven. Is it, 
then, a communication possessing anything in 
common with our ordinary associations ? or is it 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 103 

a book so entirely new as to furnish us with no 
means of judging of it by the exercise of that 
ordinary tendency of our nature which leads us 
to judge of causes by their effects, and of effects 
by their causes ? The slightest examination of 
the Christian scheme will convince any impar- 
tial mind that the view of the divine character 
and government which it presents is in strictest 
harmony with what may be deduced from the 
survey of nature, the phenomena of divine pro- 
vidence, and the dictates of natural conscience. 
The particular modifications of divine perfection 
which are seen displayed in the pages of revela- 
tion may be to a great extent new, but the great 
question is, — Are not these modifications such as 
to fall in and harmonize with all that the reason 
of man would suggest to him, as suited to the cha- 
racter of God and the condition of human nature ? 
I am satisfied that the discoveries of the Bible, 
though so transcendently glorious, are, in their 
great outline, answerable to all our natural con- 
ceptions of the Most High, as the supreme moral 
governor. 

Two things seem necessary to authenticate 



104 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

a religion as coming from God, — -first, that the 
facts and representations which it contains should 
be such as to exhibit all that is lofty in wisdom, 
mighty in power, awful in purity, and subduing 
in kindness ; and, second, that the representation 
thus afforded of the divine character should, 
when contemplated and believed by man, be 
fitted, by the laws of his being, to transform him 
into the divine image, and to make him a par- 
taker of the divine happiness. The very first 
shewing of Christianity is to this effect. It pro- 
poses, by an overwhelming manifestation of the 
character of God in the great scheme of re- 
demption, to raise man from his present state of 
sin and rebellion, and to confer on him that 
elevated species of blessedness which arises from 
conformity to the will of an infinitely perfect 
Being. 

" When/' says an eloquent writer, " we read 
a history which authoritatively claims to be an 
exhibition of the character of God in his deal- 
ings with men, — if we find in it that which fills 
and overflows our most dilated conceptions of 
moral worth and loveliness in the Supreme 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 105 

Being, and at the same time feel that it is 
triumphant in every appeal that it makes to our 
consciences in its statements of the obliquity 
and corruption of our own hearts, — and if our 
reason farther discovers a system of powerful 
moral stimulants, embodied in the facts of this 
history, which necessarily tend to produce in 
the mind a resemblance to that high character 
which is there portrayed, — if we discern that 
the spirit of this history gives peace to the con- 
science by the very exhibition which quickens its 
sensibility — that it dispels the terrors of guilt by 
the very fact which associates sin with the full 
loathing of the heart — that it combines in one 
wondrous and consistent whole our most fearful 
forebodings, and our most splendid anticipations 
for futurity — that it inspires a pure and elevated 
and joyful hope for eternity by those very de- 
clarations which attach a deeper and more inter- 
esting obligation to the discharge of the minutest 
part of human duty, — if we see that the object 
of all its tendencies is the perfection of moral 
happiness, and that these tendencies are naturally 



106 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

connected with the belief of its narration, — if we 
see all this in the gospel, we may then say that 
our own eyes have seen its truth, and that we 
need no other testimony. We may then well 
believe that God has been pleased, in pity to 
our wretchedness, and in condescension to our 
feebleness, to clothe the eternal laws which 
regulate his spiritual government in such form 
as may be palpable to our conceptions, and 
adapted to the urgency of our necessities. "* 

Such an interposition has the Eternal Majesty 
of heaven vouchsafed in the revelation of mercy 
by Christ Jesus, — a revelation which abounds 
in all that is awful and all that is tender ; which 
describes God as the avenger of sin, and the 
Saviour of the guilty ; which exhibits the loftiest 
claims of the lawgiver, and the tenderest attri- 
butes of compassion ; which makes moral im- 
purity infinitely odious and detestable, by the 
very means whereby it is forgiven ; which points 
to a guilty race reclaimed and saved, while the 



* Erskine on Internal Evidence, third edit., pp. 18, 19. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 107 

Glorious Projector of the scheme stands forth 
before the intelligent universe in the ineffable 
majesty of spotless and unchangeable purity. 

Does reason tell us, that as God has seen fit 
to create various orders of intelligent creatures, 
to him they must all be accountable, and over 
them all he must exercise the right and the con- 
trol of a moral governor ? Revelation comes in 
with its direct and absolute assurance upon this 
point, resolving all the doubts which sin had 
fostered in the human mind, and proclaiming 
God's right to rule, his title to obedience, and 
his determination to punish every infringement 
of his righteous government. Had the Bible 
said less on this head, or spoken a language quite 
different, it would have been at variance with 
the simplest dictates of sound reason. If there 
be one God, the creator and upholder of the 
universe, the fountain of all being, and of all 
happiness, it follows by resistless consequence, 
that he is the governor of the world he has made, 
and that the laws by which he governs must be 
in accordance with the dictates of his own pure 
and benevolent nature. The Scriptures teach us 



108 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

distinctly what those principles are ; but in 
doing so, they do not violate one of all our 
natural conclusions. 

Does the reason of man whisper to him, that 
the Being who made him is the constant in- 
spector of his actions, and that a period may 
arrive when an account will be required of the 
manner in which he has passed the few short 
years of his transitory existence ? Revelation 
does not proffer its aid to repress this natural 
and almost universal feeling ; but to place it 
upon the sure basis of a divine communication, 
to impart to it the character of an incontroverti- 
ble truth, and to raise it to the potency of an 
all-pervading and all- subduing motive. 

Does a secret monitor disturb man's inward 
repose, and tell him that he has sinned against 
his own acknowledged standard of duty, and fill 
him with awful forebodings of judgment to come, 
and urge him to many a vain expedient for the 
settlement of that score of guilt which he knows 
he has been contracting from the earliest dawn- 
iugs of reason ? Revelation does not lift up its 
voice to repress the natural testimony of con- 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 109 

science, but to cause it to be heard in yet louder 
•strains of condemnation, — to strip man of all vain 
conceit of excellence which, in his fallen state, 
he does not possess,— to shew, by the pure 
standard of the written law, how far he has 
departed from his original integrity, — to present 
such an image of his moral defection as shall 
cause him to loathe and abhor himself in dust 
and in ashes before God, — and to teach him the 
utter insufficiency of all human aid to extricate 
him from that state of condemnation and sin into 
which, by rebellion against the righteous Law- 
giver of the universe, he has smik. 

Does the mind of man, conscious of its own 
evil desert, and no less conscious of the blight 
which sin has spread over all the sources of 
human enjoyment, sigh after some hidden well- 
spring of life, — some new manifestation of the 
character of God, which shall dart a ray of mercy 
and hope across the gloom of his apostacy,— 
some divine balm that shall heal those wounds 
which have been inflicted in his lacerated spirit ? 
Yes, my beloved reader, such have been, and 
such are the wishes and aspirations of the guilty 

L 



] 10 THE TRUTH AXD EXCELLENCE 

spirit of man. He has departed from " the foun- 
tain of living waters/ "and the entire range of crea- 
ture enjoyment has proved but a broken cistern 
to him. He is not, indeed, rightly affected with 
the true nature of his malady, nor does he pro- 
perly appreciate the means by which his peace 
and happiness may be restored ; but he is in 
that precise state in which, if he will open the 
revelation of God, and prayerfully examine its 
contents, he will find the very blessings after 
which he sighs, and in the application of them 
will perceive that the Author of his being is also 
the God of his salvation. 

In the promise of a Saviour, divinely accom- 
plished in the fulness of time, and in the pro- 
pitiatory sacrifice of the cross, we behold a 
scheme which bears along with it indubitable 
proofs of its conformity to the character of God, 
and of its adaptation to the guilt and necessity 
of man. It is so far, indeed, above all his 
natural conceptions of a divine interposition, 
that it may well be styled " the wisdom of God 
in a mystery;''* but it is at the same time so 

* 1 Cor. ii. 7. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. Ill 

exquisitely adjusted to his moral relations, and 
to the moral catastrophe in which he is involved, 
that he has only to open his eyes that he may 
see, and his heart that he may feel. The 
problem of his salvation is here solved, while 
the claims of the moral governor remain unim- 
paired. His conscience tells him that lie is a 
transgressor ; but it suggests no effectual method 
of escape from merited condemnation. But 
Christianity points him to " the blood of the 
Lamb," to the " one offering" of Jesus Christ, 
"for the sins of the people." He feels that he 
is at a fearful moral distance from God ; but he 
sees in the method of his reconciliation the 
means whereby his nature may be reclaimed, 
and learns that a heart all rebellion may be 
drawn by the mighty attractions of divine love 
into the habit of cheerful, unreserved, and filial 
obedience. 

To doubt that such a scheme, — so perfect in 
its conformity to all that we connect with the 
infinitely pure Spirit, and so admirably adapted 
to the nature, condition, and prospects of man, 
— to doubt that such a scheme is from heaven, 



112 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

is to do violence to the surest inductions of 
enlightened reason, to turn a deaf ear to the 
voice of conscience, and obstinately to lose sight 
of a coincidence which distinctly shews that the 
nature of man and the means of his redemption 
lay claim to a common origin. 

Without the provisions of the Bible, man is a 
wanderer and an outcast. He beholds, in some 
measure, his responsibility and his guilt ; but 
he has no well defined prospect of how it may 
fare with him when his body goes down to the 
dust. He feels that this world is a wilderness, 
and all its inhabitants mourners ; but be is unable 
to solace himself in the prospect of a blessed 
immortality. He finds himself the subject of 
indefinite forebodings, and discovers nothing in 
the wide range of created nature that can fill up 
the desires of a mind distanced from its native 
element ; but how to impart a fixed character to 
his hopes, and how to satisfy his enlarged desires, 
he knows not. Let him turn, then, to the well- 
springs of salvation, let him view the character 
of God as set forth in the doctrine of the gospel, 
let him examine for himself the great mystery of 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 113 

godliness, let him yield up his whole soul to the 
impression of redeeming love, let him implore 
the spirit of Christ to unfold the infinite grace 
and loveliness of his character, let him bow 
down Iris reason to the verities of the cross, — 
then will his guilt subside, Iris fears vanish, his 
prospects brighten ; then will his soul glow with 
ardent love to God; then will the darkness which 
broods over the scenes of earth be scattered ; 
then will the truth of revelation be felt ; then 
will the self-evidencing power of the gospel be 
verified; and then will the proud objector be 
converted into a "little child," and the vain 
disputer into a meek and humble disciple of the 
Son of God. 

SECTION II. 

THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

By the external evidences of Christianity we are 
to understand those attestations to its divine 
origin which have been either directly vouch- 
safed from heaven, or which may be infallibly 
traced in its early success and in its great moral 



114 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

results. And i£ by an impartial survey of 
the various topics connected with internal evi- 
dence, we are compelled to admit the pre- 
sumptuous boldness of those who can disburden 
their minds of all apprehension in rejecting a 
scheme distinguished alike by its grandeur and 
adaptation, — by a careful examination of exter- 
nal evidence, we are driven to the conclusion, 
that the rejector of Revelation is at war with 
omnipotence, and that he is standing out against 
a species of proof which demands of every intel- 
ligent and accountable creature the most prompt 
and unhesitating submission. Such is the nature 
and such the variety* of external evidence, that 
it leaves every man inexcusable who remains in 
secret or avowed opposition to the claims of the 
gospel. In treating of the subject of external 
evidence I begin — 
1. With Miracles. 

If the Bible be from God, it must be true in 
itself, irrespective of all miraculous attestation ; 
and if it be not from God, it is equally clear that 
no miracle can have been vouchsafed on its be- 
half. A '.MIRACLE IS AN ACT OF OMNIPOTENCE, 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



115 



WHICH DEVIATES FROM, OR SUSPENDS THE OR- 
DINARY course of nature,* and which is 
fitted to produce an impression upon rational 
beings by the very circumstance of its singularity 
and its unaccountableness. Such an interposi- 
tion we may assure ourselves would not be 
granted in support of any messenger not from 
God, or of any doctrine containing in it the 
slightest shade of imposture. 

The most inveterate enemies of Revelation 
have been compelled to admit that a miracle 
WTought by any being professing to act under 

* Dr. Samuel Clarke has said that " A miracle is a 
work effected in a manner unusual, or different from the 
common and regular method of providence, by the inter- 
position of God himself, or of some intelligent agent su- 
perior to man, for the proof or evidence of some particular 
doctrine, or in attestation of the authority of some particu- 
lar person." The Rev. Richard Watson, in his Theologi- 
cal Dictionary, observes, that " A miracle, in the popular 
sense, is a prodigy or an extraordinary event which surprises 
us by its novelty. In a more accurate and philosophic sense, 
a miracle is an effect which does not follow from any of 
the regular laws of nature, or which is inconsistent with 
some known law of it, or contrary to the settled constitu- 
tion and course of things. Accordingly, all miracles pre- 
suppose an established system of nature, within the limits 
of which they operate, and with the order of which they 
disagree." 



116 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

the authority of God, would be a sufficient evi- 
dence of the divinity of his mission. " We 
know/' said a Jewish ruler to Christ, "that 
thou art a teacher come from God ; for no man 
can do these miracles that thou doest, except 
God be with him."* A principle is here ad- 
mitted which it is impossible, consistently with 
sound reason, to deny ; it is this — that a teacher 
working miracles furnishes indubitable evidence 
that his mission is from God. To test, with ut- 
most severity, the evidence of miraculous inter- 
position in any given instance, must be an im- 
perative duty, but to withold our assent to any 
doctrine after the finger of Omnipotence has in- 
scribed over it its celestial origin, is to trample 
reason in the dust, and to set up in its place the 
most inveterate and stupid prejudice. 

The question, then, is, did Christ and his 
apostles perform the miracles attributed to them 
in the books of the New Testament ? and did 
they appeal to those miracles in confirmation of 
the message they delivered ? In reading the 



John iii. 2. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 117 

inimitable discourses of Christ, no one can hesi- 
tate for a moment as to the nature of the appeal 
made by Him to miracles. " The works/' said 
He, " which the Father hath given me to finish, 
the same works that I do, bear witness of me, 
that the Father hath sent me."* " The works 
that I do in my Father's name, they bear wit- 
ness of me."f " If I do not the w^orks of my 
Father, believe me not. But if I do, though 
ye believe not me, believe the works ; that ye 
may know and believe that the Father is in me, 
and I in him."$ " Believe me that I am in the 
Father and the Father in me ; or else believe me 
for the very work's sake/'§ Here miracles are 
assumed, upon the ordinary principles of reason, 
to be a sufficient evidence of Christ's mission 
from the Father to every impartial and unbiassed 
mind. So unhesitatingly did Jesus of Nazareth 
use this argument, that when the disciples of 
John came to him to inquire whether he was 
indeed the Christ, his only reply was, " Go and 
shew John again those things which ye do 

* John v. 36. f John x - 25 - 

\ John x. 37, 38. § John xiv, 1L 



118 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



hear and see : the blind receive their sight, ana 
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the 
deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor 
have the gospel preached to them."* And 
when the apostles of our Lord allude, at any 
time, to the power by which they perform their 
several miracles, they invariably refer to the all- 
potent charm of " that name which is above 
every name;" as when the helpless paralytic 
was healed at the beautiful gate of the Temple — 
"If we, this day," said Peter, "be examined of 
the good deed done to the impotent man, by 
what means he is made whole; be it known 
unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that 
by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom 
ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, 
even by him doth this man stand here before 
you whole. "f 

* The last clause of this appeal is founded on the argu- 
ment for Christianity which is derived from prophecy, 
and which will be glanced at in a subsequent part of this 
treatise. It was a distinct part of Messiah's prophetic 
character that when he appeared he should u preach glad 
tidings to the meek" — that is, to the poor. — Isaiah, lxi. 1. 

f Acts, iv. 9, 10. 



OF CHRISTIANITY 119 

The whole question of miracles, then, must 
resolve itself into a matter of fact. And the 
attempt of Hume and others to blink the fact, 
by assuming the insufficiency of any testimony 
to transmit the knowledge of a miraculous occur- 
rence, is neither more nor less than to affirm, that 
if God should at any time see fit to perform a 
miracle, in attestation of some message of mercy 
to a ruined race, he could not adopt any method 
by which the certain evidence of its occurrence 
could be preserved from age to age.* It is not, 
surely, the spirit of sound philosophy in which 
any man asserts that a miracle is contrary to 
experience. It may not, indeed, come under 
the head of the ordinary experience of man- 
kind; but that it is contrary to it cannot be 
shewn. According to our ordinary experience, 
bodily disease, when successfully removed, is 
subdued by the influence of certain human 
remedies which God is pleased to bless. Ac- 
cording to the wonderful history of the gospel, 
disease is often rebuked by a word, a look, an 
exercise of the secret w T ill of the miraculous 

* See " A Dissertation on Miracles," &c, by George 
Campbell, D,D. 



120 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

agent. But what is there, we ask, in these two 
distinct classes of facts opposed to each other ? 
They may each, indeed, belong to a distinct 
chain of causation, — they may be totally inde- 
pendent events, — they may admit and require 
various kinds of proof; but he who says that they 
are contrary the one to the other, utters a sen- 
timent opposed to true philosophy, and commits 
his good sense in his zeal to overturn the evi- 
dence of the gospel. " To pronounce a miracle 
to be false," says a distinguished writer, " be- 
cause it is different from experience, is only to 
conclude against its general existence from the 
very circumstance which constitutes its particular 
nature ; for if it were not different from expe- 
rience, where would be its singularity? Or 
what particular proof could be drawn from it if 
it happened according to the ordinary train of 
human events, or was included in the operation 
of the general laws of nature ? We grant that 
it does differ from experience ; but we do not 
presume to make our experience the standard of 
the divine conduct.''* 

* See the Rev. Richard Watson's Theological Diction- 
ary, under the article " Miracles." 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 121 

We hear much among infidel writers of the 
immutability of the laws of nature ; but whence 
do they learn that these laws are never to be 
infringed on by the omnipotent will of the Infi- 
nite Mind ? It is surely no proof that the Al- 
mighty is a changeable being because he either 
creates a world, or acts according to his own 
infinite perfections in governing it. There is 
often a great deal of assumption in the use of 
the terms "laws of nature/' ' " course of nature/' 
&c, as employed by writers of a sceptical turn. 
If in the use of such terms it were only intended 
to assert, that the Most High has subjected the 
material universe to the government of certain 
great laws, which act uniformly, except when 
he is pleased to suspend or to counteract them, 
there could be no objection whatever to the 
phraseology employed ; but when they are 
spoken of as a kind of intelligent and inde- 
pendent power, — when they are described as 
something almost distinct from the continued 
exercise of the divine behest, — when they are 
regarded as an imperative control, binding even 
the will of Deity itself, they are placed in an 

M 



122 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

imposing light, to which they have no conceiv- 
able title. " Our knowledge of the ordinary 
course of things, though limited, is yet real ; and 
therefore it is essential to a miracle, both that it 
differs from that course, and be accompanied 
with peculiar and unequivocal signs of such 
difference. We have been told, that the course 
of nature is fixed and unalterable ; and therefore 
it is not consistent with the immutability of God 
to perform miracles. But, surely, they who 
reason in this manner beg the point in question. 
We have no right to assume that the deity has 
ordained such general laws as will exclude his 
interposition ; and we cannot suppose that he 
would forbear to interfere where any important 
end could be answered. This interposition, 
though it controls, in particular cases, the 
energy, does not dimmish the utility of those 
laws. It leaves them to fulfil their own proper 
purposes, and effects only a distinct purpose, for 
which they were not calculated. If the course 
of nature implies the laws of matter and motion, 
into which the most opposite phenomena maybe 
resolved, it is certain that we do not yet know 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 123 

them in their full extent; and, therefore, that 
events which are related by judicious and dis- 
interested persons, and at the same time imply 
no gross contradiction, are possible in them- 
selves, and capable of a certain degree of proof. 
If the course of nature implies the whole order 
of events which God has ordained for the 
government of the world, it includes both his 
ordinary and extraordinary dispensations, and 
among them miracles may have their place as a 
part of the universal plan. It is, indeed, con- 
sistent with sound philosophy, and not incon- 
sistent with pure religion, to acknowledge that 
they might be disposed by the Supreme Being 
at the same time with the more ordinary effects 
of his power; that their causes and occasions 
might be arranged with the same regularity; 
and that in reference chiefly to their concomi- 
tant circumstances of persons and time, to the 
specific ends for which the}' were employed, 
and to our idea of the immediate necessity there 
is for a divine agent, miracles would differ from 
common events, in which the hand of God acts 
as efficaciously, though less visibly. On this 



124 «* THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

consideration of the subject, miracles, instead of 
contradicting nature, might form a part of it. 
But what our limited reason and scanty expe- 
rience may comprehend, should never be repre- 
sented as a full and exact view of the possible 
or actual varieties which exist in the works of 
God."* 

It is daring and presumptuous in the extreme 
to attempt, by reasonings d priori, to set aside 
the physical possibility of a miracle, or to assume 
that human testimony is inadequate to the task 
of rendering it available to the conviction of 
mankind. If the argument d priori is at all to 
be admitted in a question of mere fact, where 
the senses were originally appealed to, it were 
easy to shew that the miraculous attestations of 
the gospel are entitled to all the benefits which 
it can possibly yield. No one can prove 
that it is contrary to the determined arrange- 
ments of Divine Providence that miracles 
should be wrought ; no one can assert, in the 
spirit of true science, that it may not have 

* See the Rev. Richard Watson's Theological Diction- 
ary, under the article " Miracles." 



OF CHRISTIANITY. ] 25 

been a part of the great scheme of God's 
moral government thus to step aside from 
the rule of his ordinary procedure ; no one can 
advisedly say that if an occasion worthy of 
miraculous interposition should present itself 
to the divine omniscience, God would fail to 
grant such interposition; no one can seriously 
contemplate the professed objects of Christianity, 
or examine in detail its wondrous provisions, 
without being constrained to admit, that it fur- 
nishes an occasion worthy of some unusual 
effort of omnipotence; and no one can calmly 
survey the miraculous facts recorded in the 
gospel history without feeling that they are 
admirably adapted to attest as divine the several 
communications to which they belong. A priori, 
I should say, that notHng is more reasonable 
than to suppose, first, that God would furnish 
his erring and sorrowful children with a revela- 
tion of his merciful designs ; and, second, that he 
would so attest that revelation with the finger of 
omnipotence as to leave all without excuse who 
did not embrace its inestimable provisions. If 
any one is bold enough to affirm- that testimony 



126 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

is an insufficient medium for the conveyance of 
a miraculous history, he should be prepared to 
go the whole length of his extravagant assump- 
tion, and to maintain, that no revelation could 
at any time be imparted by God to his creatures, 
because human testimony, the only method of 
transmitting historic facts, was insufficient to the 
task of conveying to the next and to succeed- 
ing generations the evidence of such revelation 
having been imparted. There is no end to 
vague conjecture if it is allowed to usurp the 
province of sound reason, and to dictate, before 
hand, what may and what may not be proper 
in the Almighty to do. There is no sure way 
of knowing what God may do, but by ascertain- 
ing what he has done; and this can only be 
known through the medium of that testimony, 
the accuracy of which admits of being tested by 
rules which cannot deceive. 

I would state the argument, then, on behalf of 
the miracles of the New Testament in some 
such way as the following : — The gospel history 
informs us that both Christ and his apostles 
wrought miracles ; it shews us that those miracles 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



127 



were appealed to as evidences of their divine 
mission; and it presents every direct and col- 
lateral mark of authenticity and truth which can 
possibly belong to any document of antiquity. 
It is admitted, on all hands, that Jesus of 
Nazareth actually lived and died in Judea, — 
that his followers became zealous and successful 
in the propagation of his cause after his death, — 
and that they were surrounded by many invete- 
rate enemies, both among their own countrymen 
and the gentiles. In the midst of danger, and in 
opposition to all their own worldly interests, they 
persevered even unto death. The cause they 
espoused was at all times open to the gaze of 
subtle and fierce enemies, who would have been 
more than happy to detect any imposture, and 
who would have been eagle-eyed to discover any 
pretension to the exercise of the mighty power 
of God which was not actually possessed. The 
persecutors of Jesus of Nazareth had their 
attention drawn to his miracles, which could no 
longer be hid in a corner ; and, unable to account 
for them, and anxious to prevent their mighty 
effect, they attributed them to satanic power. 



128 



THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



The cause, however, spread with amazing rapi- 
dity, and the death of the Master but added 
fresh energy to the cause of his disciples. For 
a time, indeed, through the weakness of their 
faith, they were filled with gloomy forebodings : 
but, according to his own prediction, their 
divine Leader rose from the dead j with powers 
of tongues and gifts of healing they went forth 
in his name ; his resurrection they openly pro- 
claimed in the city of Jerusalem ; thousands of 
impenitent Jews laid down the weapons of their 
hostility ; the miracles of Christ and his apostles 
were acknowledged by multitudes as indubitable 
matters of fact ; and their fame spread through- 
out the whole world. Had they been mere 
impostures, they would have been speedily 
detected ; on the contrary, however, they drew 
down the peculiar notice of heathen writers, and 
Celsus himself finds no better method of dispos- 
ing of them than by absurdly attributing them to 
a skilful use of the arts of magic on the part of 
Christ's disciples.* 

* Justin Martyr, Apol. L, chap, xxxvii., assures us 
that the early apologists for Christianity insisted more on 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



129 



The following tilings are clear respecting 
Christ's miracles : — They were of such a nature 
as to surpass all efforts of human poiver or skill. 
By them, and without the intervention of second 
causes, the blind received their sight,* the 
paralytic instantly walked, t the lepers were 
cleansed. :j; By them five loaves and two small 
fishes were multiplied so as to become food for 
thousands ;§ by them simple water was converted 
into wine ;|| by them the stormy tempest was 
hushed into an immediate calm ;flf by them the 
spirits of darkness were compelled to depart from 
those unhappy victims whom they had been 
suffered to possess ;** and by them, once and 
again, the dead were restored to life, and became 
the resistless witnesses of a supernatural inter- 
position. ft Now, in all these cases, every 

the argument from prophecy than from miracles, because, 
when they appealed to miracles, the enemies of the truth 
retorted upon them, by attributing the entire miraculous 
phenomena of the gospel to the power of magic. The 
apologists were wrong, but the fact speaks volumes as to 
the reality of the miracles recorded by the Evangelists. 
* Mark x. 46—52. 

t Mark ii. 10, 11. t Luke xvii. 12—19. 

j Matt. xiv. 17—21. || Johnii. 1—11. 

«[ Matt, viii, 23-27. ** Luke iv. 41. 

ft John xi. 1— 43. Luke vii. 11—18. 



130 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

human being was an equally sufficient judge ; 
from the very nature of the facts it was im- 
possible that any one could be deceived; the 
finger of God was so distinctly palpable, that 
both sense and reason combined to verify the 
true nature of the events. 

Again, the miracles of Christ were done in 
public, at the doors of the Jewish temple, in 
the places of public resort, when he had been 
preaching to thousands, and when thousands 
were the actual subjects of them. 

They were, moreover, of such a nature that 
no collusion, no magical art, no legerdemain, 
no kind of deception, could have been practised. 

They were wrought in the presence of persons 
full of enmitv and cruel hatred, who would not 
have failed to lay open the entire imposture, had 
any existed ; but so confounded were the Scribes 
and Pharisees at the sight of them, that they 
sought relief from their unhappy impressions, by 
representing Jesus of Nazareth as in league with 
the great spirit of darkness. 

The accounts of these miracles were, soon 
after their occurrence, published to the world, 
m the very places where they happened ; yet 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



131 



no evidence can be adduced to shew that a 
single contemporary of the Saviour was found 
bold enough to deny the fact of their occurrence ; 
nor indeed can it be shewn that any attempt 
of this kind was made* till long after Christ had 
ascended to heaven. " Here, it may be de- 
manded, When could the belief of such transac- 
tions have been obtruded on mankind, if they 
had never happened? Surely not in the age 
when they were said to have been witnessed by 
tens of thousands, who were publicly challenged 
to deny them if they could ! Not in any sub- 
sequent age ; for the origin of Christianity was 
ascribed to them, and millions must have been 
persuaded that they had always believed those 
things of which they had never till that time so 
much as heard. "+ 

Having offered the preceding remarks on the 

* The fable that the disciples stole the body of Jesus 
will be dealt with in its own proper place. It is evident, 
however, that no use was made of it by the Jews where 
it could have been most available : in fact, it was too 
absurd to be gravely referred to. 

t See the Rev. Thomas Scott's Works, vol. ii. p. 16. 



132 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

miracles of Christ, I would just observe, that the 
miracles recorded in the Old Testament Scrip- 
tures belong to the same great system of truth, 
and are supported by similar evidence. Infidels 
have spoken of the Patriarchal and Mosaic 
dispensations as if altogether distinct from the 
religion of Christ ; but this is a gross mistake, as 
Christianity is the consummation of all those 
institutions which are embodied in the Jewish 
Scriptures. The miraculous fact of a universal 
deluge is abundantly confirmed by all the re- 
searches of geologists, and the organic remains 
of a former world must leave those inex- 
cusable who reject the data of revelation. And 
with regard to the miraculous history of the 
Israelites in Egypt, at the Red Sea, in the 
Wilderness, and in Canaan, the facts of that 
history and the national monuments which, from 
the earliest ages, were fixed on to perpetuate it, 
combine to relieve the mind from the slightest 
suspicion as to its genuineness. " Can any man 
of common sense think that Moses and Aaron 
could possibly have persuaded the whole nation 
of Israel that they had witnessed all the plagues 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



133 



of Egypt, passed through the Red Sea with the 
waters piled on each side of them, gathered the 
manna every morning, and seen all the won- 
ders recorded in their history, had no such 
events taken place ? If, then, that generation 
could not be imposed on, when could the belief of 
these extraordinary transactions be palmed upon 
the nation ? Surely it would have been im- 
possible in the next age to persuade them that 
their fathers had seen and experienced such 
wonderful things when they had never before 
heard a single word about them in all their 
lives, and when an appeal must have been 
made to them, that these were things well 
known among them ! What credit could have 
been obtained to such a forgery at any subse- 
quent period ? It would have been absolutely 
necessary, in making the attempt, to persuade 
the people that such traditions had always been 
current among them ; that the memory of them 
had for ages been perpetuated by days and 
ordinances, observed by all the nation ; and 
that their whole civil and religious establishment 
had thence originated : and could this possibly 
N 



134 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

have been effected if they all knew that no stich 
memorials and traditions had ever been heard of 
among them 

I cannot deny myself the pleasure of famish- 
ing my readers with a remarkably clear and 
beautiful account of the miracles of the Mosaic 
dispensation furnished by the ingenious author 
of " Theological Institutes/' who has already 
been referred to.* 

" Out/" says he, " of the numerous miracles 
wrought by the agency of Moses, we select, in 
addition to those mentioned in chap, ix., the 
plague of darkness. Two circumstances are to 
be noted in the relation given of the event. 
(Exod. x.) It continued three days, and it 
afflicted the Egyptians only, for " all the children 
of Israel had light in their dwellings.''' The 
fact here mentioned was of the most public 
kind ; and had it not taken place, every Egyp- 
tian and every Israelite could have contra dieted 
the account. The phenomenon was not pro- 

* See the Rev. Thomas Scott's Works, vol ii. pp. 1*2, 13. 
* Theological Institutes, vol. i. pp. 157 — R»L 



OF CHRISTIANITY, 135 

duced by any eclipse of the sun, for no eclipse 
of that luminary can endure so long. Some of 
the Roman writers mention a darkness by day 
so great that persons were unable to know each 
other ; but we have no historical account of any 
other darkness so long continued as this, and so 
intense that the Egyptians " rose not up from 
their places for three days." But if any such 
circumstance had occurred, and a natural cause 
could have been assigned for it, yet even 
then the miraculous character of this event 
would remain unshaken ; for to what but to a 
supernatural cause could the distinction made 
between the Israelites and the Egyptians be 
attributed, when they inhabited a portion of the 
same country, and when their neighbourhoods 
were immediately adjoining? Here then are 
the characters of a miracle. The established 
course of natural causes and effects is interrupted 
by an operation upon that mighty element, the 
atmosphere. That it was not a chance irregu- 
larity in nature, is made apparent from the 
effect following the volition of a man acting in 
the name of the Lord of Nature, and from its 



136 



THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



being restrained by that to a certain part of the 
same country, — c Moses stretched out his hand/ and 
the darkness prevailed, every where but in the 
dwellings of his own people. The fact has been 
established by former arguments ; and the fact 
being allowed, the miracle follows of necessity. 

" The destruction of the first-born of the 
Egyptians may be next considered. Here, too, 
are several circumstances to be carefully noted. 
This judgment was threatened in the presence 
of Pharaoh, before any of the other plagues 
were brought upon him and his people. The 
Israelites also were forewarned of it. They 
were directed to slay a lamb, sprinkle the blood 
upon their door-posts, and prepare for their 
departure that same night. The stroke was 
inflicted upon the first-born of the Egyptians 
only, and not upon any other part of the family, — 
it occurred in the same house, — the first-born of 
the Israelites escaped without exception, — and 
the festival of ( the passover ' was from that 
night instituted in remembrance of the event. 
Such a festival could not in the nature of the 
thing be established in any subsequent age, in 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 137 

commemoration of an event which never oc- 
curred ; and if instituted at the time, the event 
must have taken place, for by no means could 
this large body of men have been persuaded that 
their first-born had been saved, and those of the 
Egyptians destroyed, if the facts had not been 
before their eyes. The history, therefore, being 
established, the miracle follows; for the order 
of nature is sufficiently known to warrant the 
conclusion, that, if a pestilence were to be 
assumed as the agent of this calamity, an epi- 
demic disease, however, rapid and destructive, 
comes not upon the threat of a mortal, and 
makes no such selection as the first-born of 
every family. 

" The miracle of dividing the waters of the 
Red Sea has already been mentioned, but 
merits more particular consideration. In this 
event we observe, as in others, circumstances 
which exclude all possibility of mistake or collu- 
sion. The subject of the miracle ; the witness 
of it the host of Israel, who passed through on 
foot, and the Egyptian nation, w T ho lost their 
king and his whole army. The miraculous 



138 THE TRUTH AKD EXCELLENCE 

characters of the event are : — the waters are 
divided and stand up on each side ; the instru- 
ment is a strong east wind, which begins its opera- 
tion upon the water, at the stretching- out of the 
hand of Moses, and ceases at the same signal, 
and that at the precise moment when the return 
of the waters would be most fatal to the Egyptian 
pursuing army. 

"It has, indeed, been asked whether there 
were not some ledges of rocks where the water 
was shallow, so that an army, at particular 
times, might pass over ; and whether the Ete- 
sian winds, which blow strongly all summer 
from the north-west, might not blow so violently 
against the sea as to keep it back < on a heap/ 
But if there were any force in these questions, it 
is plain that such suppositions would leave the 
destruction of the Egyptians unaccounted for. 
To shew that there is no weight in them at all, 
let the place where the passage of the Red Sea 
was effected be first noted. Some fix it near 
Suez, at the head of the gulf ; but if there was 
satisfactory evidence of this, it ought also to be 
taken into the account that formerly the gulf 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



139 



extended at least twenty-five miles north of 
Suez, the place where it terminates at present.* 
But the names of places, as well as tradition, 
fix the passage about ten hours' journey lower 
down, at Clysma, or the valley of Bedea. The 
name given by Moses to the place where the 
Israelites encamped before the sea was divided 
was Piha-hiroth, which signifies 6 the mouth of the 
ridge,' or of that chain of mountains which line 
the western coast of the Red Sea ; and as there 
is but one mouth of that chain through which 
an immense multitude of men, women, and 
children, could possibly pass when flying from 
their enemies, there can be no doubt whatever 
respecting the situation of Piha-hiroth ; and the 
modern names of conspicuous places in its 
neighbourhood prove that those by whom such 
names were given believed that this was the 
place at which the Israelites passed the sea in 
safety, and where Pharaoh was drowned. Thus 
we have close by Piha-hiroth, on the western 
side of the gulf, a mountain called Attaka, which 
signifies deliverance. On the eastern coast op- 

* Lord Valentin's Travels, vol. iii. p, 344. 



140 THB TM7TH AND EXCELLENCE 

posite is a head-land called Has Musa, or ( the 
Cape of Moses;'' somewhat lower, Harnam 
Faraun, 'Pharaoh's Springs;' whilst at these 
places, the general name of the gulf itself is 
Bahr-al-Kohum, 6 the Bay of Submersion/' in 
which there is a whirlpool called Birket Faraun, 
'the Pool of Pharaoh.'' This, then, was the 
passage of the Israelites ; and the depth of the sea 
here is stated by Bruce, who may be consulted 
as to these localities, at about fourteen fathoms, 
and the breadth at between three and four 
leagues. But there is no 6 ledge of rocks;' and, 
as to the 6 Etesian wind,' the same traveller 
observes, * If the Etesian, blowing from the 
north-west in summer, could keep the sea as 
a wall, on the right, of fifty feet high, still the 
difficulty would remain of building the wall to 
the left, or to the north. If the Etesian winds 
had done this once, they must have repeated it 
many a time before or since, from the same 
causes/ The wind which actually did blow, 
according to history, either as an instrument of 
dividing the waters, or, which is more probable, 
as the instrument of drying the ground, after the 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 141 

waters were divided by the immediate energy of 
the Divine power, was not a north wind, but an 
' east wind ;' and, as Dr. Hales observes, c seems 
to be introduced by way of anticipation, to 
exclude the natural agency which might be 
afterwards resorted to for solving the miracle ; 
for it is remarkable that the monsoon in the 
Red Sea blows the summer-half of the year from 
the north, and the winter-half from the south, 
neither of which could produce the miracle in 
question.' 

"The miraculous character of this event is, 
therefore, most strongly marked. An expanse 
of water, and that water a sea, of from nine to 
twelve miles broad, known to be exceedingly 
subject to agitations, is divided, and a wall of 
water is formed on each hand, affording a pas- 
sage on dry land for the Israelites. The phe- 
nomenon occurs, too, just as the Egyptian host 
are on the point of overtaking the fugitives, and 
ceases at the moment when the latter reach the 
opposite shore in safety, and when their enemies 
are in the midst of the passage, in the only 
position in which the closing of the wall of 



142 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

waters on each side could insure the entire 
destruction of so large a force ! 

" The falling of the manna in the wilderness 
for forty years, is another unquestionable miracle, 
and one in which there could be neither mistake 
on the part of those who were sustained by it, 
nor fraud on the part of Moses. That this -event 
was not produced by the ordinary course of 
nature, is rendered certain by the fact, that the 
same wilderness has been travelled by indi- 
viduals, and by large bodies of men, from the 
earliest ages to the present, but no such supply 
of food was ever met with, except on this occa- 
sion ; and its miraculous character is further 
marked by the following circumstances: — 1. 
That it fell but six days in the week. 2. That 
it fell in such prodigious quantities as sustained 
three millions of souls. 3. That there fell a 
double quantity every Friday, to serve the 
Israelites for the next day, which was their 
Sabbath. 4. That what was gathered on the 
first five days of the week stank and bred worms 
if kept above one day; but that winch was 
gathered on Friday kept sweet for two days ; 



OF CHRISTIANITY . 



143 



and 5. That it continued falling while the 
Israelites remained in the wilderness, but ceased 
as soon as they came out of it, and got corn to 
eat in the land of Canaan. 6. Let these very 
extraordinary particulars be considered, and 
they at once confirm the fact, whilst they un- 
equivocally establish the miracle. No people 
could be deceived in these circumstances ; no per- 
son could persuade them of their truth if they had 
not occurred ; and the whole was so clearly out 
of the regular course of nature, as to mark un- 
equivocally the interposition of God. To the 
majority of the numerous miracles recorded in 
the Old Testament, the same remarks apply, 
and upon them the same miraculous characters 
are as indubitably impressed." 

To these remarks I may just add, that the 
fact of the antiquity, genuineness, and uncor- 
rupted transmission of the books both of the Old 
and New Testament Scriptures, is sustained by 
an uninterrupted chain of evidence, which could 
be adduced in favour of no other document of 
a remote antiquity, and which ought to have 
shamed and for ever silenced the opponents 



144 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

of revelation. Even enemies themselves have 
unwittingly served the cause of truth by add- 
ing to this testimony. The Jews are to this 
day, and have been through every past age, the 
effective and unanswerable defenders of their 
own canon ; and the enemies of Christianity 
who arose in the second century and down- 
wards, were valuable coadjutors of the Christian 
apologists, in alluding to the alleged facts of 
Christianity, though with a view to refute them. 
It would be easy to shew, not only that the 
Christian fathers, notwithstanding their many 
errors and absurdities, served the cause of reve- 
lation, by proving the antiquity, genuineness, 
and uncorrupted character of the sacred text; 
but that Clesus, and Porphyry, and Julian, to 
say nothing of the Roman historians, Tacitus 
and Suetonius, did an immense service, though 
they intended it not, in endeavouring to refute 
facts which, if they had never existed, could not 
have obtained currency in the w^orld. 

It is unreasonable, then, in the extreme to re- 
fuse credit to the facts of Christianity, standing 
as they do upon such an irrefragable basis. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 145 

God has spread over them the shield of omni- 
potence, and he who will not be convinced by a 
well authenticated testimony of miracles, would 
not be persuaded though one actually rose from 
the dead. 

x\s the resurrection of Christ is a fact of such 
vital moment in the argument connected with 
miracles, I shall devote to it the notice of a dis- 
tinct discussion, hoping thereby to condense into 
very narrow limits the amount of proof arising to 
Christianity from the survey of its miraculous 
character. 

2. The argument derived from the Resurrection 
. of Christ. 

It must have been remarked by every care- 
ful observer, that there are two distinct classes 
of miracles recorded in the gospel history, — 
those which the facts of Christianity themselves 
involve, and those which were wrought by our 
Lord and his apostles in confirmation . of the 
message they delivered. The necessity, per- 
haps, of the latter class of miracles chiefly ori- 
ginates in the first. A revelation of facts and 
doctrines altogether supernatural seemed to de- 
o 



J 46 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

niand an attestation corresponding to its own 
nature. It is difficult, indeed, to conceive of the 
idea of an express and direct revelation from the 
Infinite Mind without instantly associating it 
with what is miraculous, and without feeling a 
sort of intuitive conviction that it will be sup- 
ported with a species of evidence answering to 
the wondrous facts which it professes to disclose. 
Most of the doctrines of revelation far transcend 
the puny conceptions of finite minds, and some 
of them are of such a sublime nature that 
they are to be regarded rather as subjects of 
humble belief than as topics of querulous dispute. 

The resurrection of Christ, in common with 
his incarnation, his temptation, his transfigura- 
tion, and his ascension to the right hand of 
power, is a fact of a distinctly miraculous cha- 
racter. It is, moreover, a fact which was di- 
vinely attested on the day of Pentecost, and, 
subsequently, by indubitable marks of a super- 
natural interposition. 

For a person to rise from the dead is an indis- 
putable manifestation of the mighty power of 
God : and if it can be shewn that Christ actually 



OF CHRISTIANITY 147 

rose from the dead, according to his own predic- 
tions, it must of necessity follow that both the 
prescience and the omnipotence of Deity were 
associated with the wondrous event. Many 
sceptics have been ready to admit, that if the 
resurrection of Christ could be fully established 
their opposition to Christianity must cease. It 
was impossible for them to concede less than this ; 
and the zealous efforts they have made to repu- 
diate the evidence of our Lord's resurrection 
sufficiently proves their anxiety to get rid of a 
fact which, if properly established, must, as by 
some mighty convulsion, shiver infidelity to 
atoms. 

As the doctrine contended for is of such vast 
importance to the full development of the truth 
of Christianity, it is a peculiarly happy circum- 
stance that the evidence upon which it stands is 
of such a diversified and powerful kind ; bearing, 
as it were, an exact proportion to the command- 
ing position which it occupies in the Christian 
scheme. With the fact of Christ's resurrection 
from the dead, the whole system of Christianity 



148 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

must stand or fall ;* to bear witness to this fact 
the office of apostles was mainly established ;f 
upon its reception our salvation vitally de- 
pends ;X and by its all-powerful influence be- 
lievers are inspired by the animating hope of 
eternal life.§ 

By this event, also, Christ was "declared to be 
the Son of God with power ;"|| by it the perfec- 
tion of his atonement was fully announced ;% 
and by it the evidence, pattern, and earnest of the 
resurrection of all his followers were strikingly 
displayed.** How momentous, then, upon the 
shewing of Christianity itself, is the doctrine of 
Christ's resurrection ! How firm ought our faith 
to be in the evidence by which it is supported ! 
And how cautious and thoughtful ought he to 
be who ventures to treat it as an imposture of 
human device ! 

In briefly surveying the evidence upon which 
the doctrine of Christ's resurrection rests, we 

* 1 Cor. xv. 14—19. f Acts i. 22. iv. 33. x. 40, 41. 

f Rom. x. 9. § 1 Pet. i. 3, 4. || Rom. i. 4. 

<j[ 1 Cor. xv. 17. Rom. iv. 25. 
] Cor. xv. 21, 22, 20, 23. Rom. viii. 11. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 149 

are naturally led to inquire whether Ins death 
actually took place ? Here no conceivable dif- 
ficulty can arise. The fact is admitted both by 
friends and enemies ; and as the J ews procured 
his crucifixion and thirsted for his blood, there 
can be no reason to doubt that they would carry 
the infamous sentence of the law into complete 
execution. Fully aware of his own predictions that 
he would rise again, they did not suffer his body to 
be removed from the cross till every symptom of 
life was extinct ; and so decisive were the marks 
of dissolution, that the soldiers, perceiving that 
he was already dead, did not break his legs, ac- 
cording to ordinary custom, when they wished 
to hasten the death of a particular culprit ; but 
one of their number (t pierced his side with a 
spear, and forthwith came thereout blood and 
water.''''* Nor did Pilate deliver up his body to 
be buried till he received direct assurance from 
the officers in command that the victim of Cal- 
vary had actually expired. 

Nor was the place of Christ's burial less ma- 



* John xix. 33; 34. 

o 2 



150 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

nifest than the fact of his death. Xo secrecy 
was attempted to be practised in this matter by 
Joseph of Arimathea, or any of the rest of 
Christ's disciples. The request, indeed, that 
they might be put in possession of the body of 
Jesus was complied with ; but all their move- 
ments were watched with nicest scrutiny, and 
a Roman watch of sixty soldiers was instantly 
set over the plaee of sepulture. 

That Christ died, then, and was buried, no 
one can doubt. Jews and heathens confirm 
the facts. Yet in a period short of three full 
days, notwithstanding the strict watch of a 
Roman guard, the body of Christ, by the ad- 
mission of the disciples and Pharisees, is removed 
from the tomb. A rumour of the fact instantly 
spreads, and enemies and friends have each their 
particular mode of accounting for it. "Which ac- 
count, then, bears upon it the signature of truth — 
the disciples' or the Jews' ? They cannot be both 
true, for they are contradictory. The disciples say 
that two women, Mary Magdalene and Mary 
the mother ol James and Salome,* had repaired 

* Mark xvi, 1—8. Luke xxiv, 1 — 12. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 151 

to the sepulchre for the purpose of perfuming 
the body of Christ with Eastern spices, and that 
an angel appeared to them, rolling away the 
stone from the door of the sepulchre, and inviting 
them, in the language of condescension, to look 
into the now empty tomb, where their Lord had 
been placed on the evening of the crucifixion, but 
from whence he had now risen in the exercise 
of an omnipotent power ; it is moreover stated 
by the disciples, that the women received com- 
mission from the angel to announce the fact of 
Christ's resurrection to the rest of his followers. 
From the same source we learn, that others sub- 
sequently repaired to the tomb and found the 
body of Christ removed, and only the linen in 
which it was wrapped left behind; that the fact 
of an actual resurrection was demonstrated by 
the appearance of Christ to several of his disci- 
ples, both alone and in full assembly ; that the 
eye saw him, that the hand touched him, that 
the mind entered into fellowship with him, that 
some enjoyed the benefit of his conversation, 
partook of food with him, listened to his instruc- 
tions, received his commands, and for the space 



152 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

of more than five weeks, had more or less inter- 
course with him ; when, at the end of this period, 
and after he had given commission to his apostles, 
he finally conducted Ms disciples to a mountain 
in Galilee, and rose to his native heavens in their 
admiring presence. 

Such is the account of Christ's resurrection as 
furnished by his friends. And what is there in 
the opposite scale ? Nothing whatever. It is 
said, indeed, by the Sanhedrim, that the disciples 
stole the body of Jesus while the watch slept ! 
This is verily all, in the shape of fact, that the 
Jews ever attempted to oppose to the combined 
testimony of the disciples ; and it is so utterly 
absurd, that nothing but the consternation occa- 
sioned by the astounding fact of the resurrection 
could have tempted them to induce the watch, by 
an act of bribery, to make such a statement. 
Either the watch were asleep or awake : if awake, 
how could an armed body of sixty men have al- 
lowed the disciples to rob the tomb of its sacred 
inhabitant ? and if asleep, how could they bear 
testimony to the fact of the disciples' theft ? This 
wild and extravagant fabrication, however, was 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 153 

speedily abandoned. Not once is it adverted to 
on those trials of the apostles which soon took 
place at Jerusalem, on account of their bold and 
open proclamation of their Master's resurrection. 
Though the apostles were cited before that very 
body who had given currency to the report of the 
disciples' theft, they are not even once taxed 
with the crime ; not a whisper escapes the lips of 
the Sanhedrim on the subject ; not one of all the 
watch is brought forward to confront the apostles, 
and to shame them out of their adherence to the 
imposture of the resurrection ; on the contary, an 
influential member of the Jewish council advises 
forbearance to the witnesses of the resurrection, 
and intimates even the possibility of the event 
itself* If the Sanhedrim had had the slightest 
belief of the wicked story invented, would they 
have adopted such a course ? Undoubtedly not. 
Now was the time to muster all their strong evi- 
dence against the facts of the resurrection, and 
to prevent its further currency among the people ; 
but nothing whatever of this kind is resorted to ; 



* Acts v. 33 -40. 



154 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

persecution and threats are the only weapons 
employed to check the rising doctrine; and a 
whole assembly of men, deeply involved in the 
consequences of the resurrection, not only suc- 
cumb to the counsel of an individual, but ap- 
parently acquiesce in the hypothetical admission 
that the entire doctrine of the apostles may yet 
prove itself to be of God. 

There is not, then, an atom of contradictory 
testimony to the fact of the resurrection as stated 
by the apostles. If we reject their account, we 
are left in a state of the wildest conjecture as to 
what became of the body of Jesus. Look, then, 
at their testimony, and see if it bears along with 
it the credentials of truth. Upon a review of 
the gospel history itself, was there any thing im- 
probable in the occurrence of Christ's resurrec- 
tion ? Did he not again and again, in the pre- 
sence of friends and enemies, predict the event, 
and point to it as the great seal of his mission ? 
and did he not furnish examples of the same 
mighty power in the resurrection of Lazarus, and 
of the widow's son, as well as in many other 
demonstrations of his eternal power and godhead ? 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 155 

Before any one can shew that the event of 
Christ's resurrection was one by no means to be 
anticipated, he must disprove the entire facts of 
our Lord's history, and thereby subvert the tes- 
timony of Heathens, Jews, and Christians. The 
question is, were the apostles deceived, or did 
they attempt to deceive others ? The former of 
these could not have been the case ; for they had 
every opportunity of identifying their Lord's per- 
son which could possibly be furnished, or which 
could ever be regarded, by the most scrupulous, 
as necessary. The very doubts of their own 
minds contributed to add strength to the convic- 
tion which they acquired of their Lord's identity ; 
and for the space of full forty days, they were 
enabled, in a succession of interviews, to correct 
any sudden or erroneous impression, and to 
settle themselves in the triumphant belief that 
Christ was risen indeed. 

Nor was there one sign of an impostor or 
deceiver attaching to these simple-hearted wit- 
nesses of the resurrection. There is no attempt 
to furnish one uniform record of the transaction. 
On the contrary, we have four different accounts 



156 



THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



of the resurrection, so distinct as to shew that 
each writer aimed at truth, and was under no 
apprehension of discrepancy in his statements ; 
and yet so entirely harmonious that the apparent 
contradictions only tend to establish the validity 
and perfect consistency of the history.* 

It may be asked, moreover, when and where 
did the apcstles of our Lord begin to proclaim 
the fact of the resurrection ? Why, at the very 
period of its alleged occurrence, and in the very 
city of the crucifixion. When they were once 
convinced of the glorious event themselves, they 
were bold as lions in its defence, and were not 
afraid to give utterance to their convictions in 
the presence of those who must have possessed 
the best means of detecting the imposture, if any 
such had been practised. The most subtle and 
disputatious of the Jewish nation heard their tes- 
timony ; malice, and wit, and power, were all 
enlisted against thorn ; but the new doctrine 

* See a Discourse by Dr. J. P. Smith " on the Evidence 
of the Divine Origin of Christianity from the Resurrection 
of Jesus," in a volume of Lectures delivered at the monthly 
meetings. 



OF CHRISTIAN ITYr 157 

prevailed, and fresh instances of miraculous 
power, in the gift of tongues, and in the ability 
to heal all manner of diseases, accredited the 
apostles as the commissioned servants of the 
Most High. 

"In all other things," observes the late Mr. 
Scott, "they appeared simple, upright, holy men; 
but if in this they deceived, the world never yet 
produced a company of such artful and wicked 
impostors, whose schemes were so deeply laid, 
so admirably conducted, and so extensively and 
permanently successful. For they spent all the 
rest of their lives in promoting the religion of 
Jesus, renouncing every earthly interest, facing 
all kinds of opposition and persecution, bearing 
contempt and ignominy, prepared habitually to 
seal their testimony with their blood, and most 
of them actually dying martyrs in the cause, re- 
commending it with their latest breath as worthy 
of universal acceptation. It is likewise obser- 
vable, that, when they went forth to preach 
Christ as risen from the dead, they were mani- 
festly changed, in almost every respect, from 
what they before had been, — their timidity gave 
p 



158 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

place to the most undaunted courage ; their car- 
nal prejudices vanished ; their ambitious contests 
ceased; their narrow views were immensely ex- 
panded; and zeal for the honour of the Lord, 
with love to the souls of men, seem to have 
engrossed and elevated all the powers of their 
minds. A more complete human testimony to 
any event cannot be imagined ; for if our Lord 
had shewn himself 6 openly to all the people' of 
the Jews, and then- rulers had still persisted in 
rejecting him, it would have rather weakened 
than confirmed the evidence; and, if they had 
unanimously received him a.s Messiah, it might 
have excited in others a suspicion that it was a 
plan concerted for aggrandizing the nation/'* 

3. The argument derived from Prophecy. 

This is a branch of Christian evidence pos- 
sessing extraordinary power, and capable of very 
extensive application. The proper idea of pro- 
phecy is the foretelling of such future events as no 
human skill or sagacity could anticipate, and as 
nothing but the prescience of the Eternal could 



* See the Rer. Thomas Scott's Works, vol. ii. pp. 15, 16. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



159 



either know or reveal. This is the test applied of 
old to the false gods of the heathen — "Shew as," 
said Jehovah to their votaries, " what shall hap- 
pen ; declare us things for to come ; shew the 
things that are to come hereafter, that we may 
know that ye are gods."* If it can be shewn 
that the leading facts recorded in Scripture were 
foretold by omniscience long ere they occurred, 
it will follow of necessity that a revelation thus 
accredited is from God. Prophecy is, indeed, a 
species of iniraculous attestation challenging the 
investigation of men in every age, and accumu- 
lating new materials of proof as the revolutions 
of Divine Providence disclose and illustrate the 
events embodied in the prophetic testimony. 

The great object and end of the prophetic dis- 
pensation was evidently to testify " before hand 
the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should 
follow," "t and to this object and end all the pre- 
dictions of Scripture might be shewn more or 
less to contribute. 

I shall begin, therefore, with those prophecies 



* Isa. xli. 22, 23. 



t 1 Pet. i. 10, 11. 



160 



THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



which relate more immediately to the Messiah ; 
and if it should appear, from a survey of facts, 
that there were many prophecies uttered concern- 
ing Him which no human skill or fore-thought 
could have ventured to announce, and which 
have realized a minute and circumstantial ac- 
complishment, — it will then follow, that they 
furnish a convincing testimony to his character 
as the Son of God, and to his mission as the 
Saviour of the world. We shall first make the 
induction of the prophetic testimony, and then 
inquire how far it is probable that the prophecies 
of the Jewish Scriptures could have induced the 
followers of Jesus of Xazareth to endeavour, by 
their own means, to bring about the events pre- 
dicted — in other words, to produce a coincidence 
in the life of Jesus to the anticipations of the 
prophets. 

The minuteness both of the predictions and 
the fulfilments will, perhaps, surprise those who 
have not closely examined this most interesting 
topic. In the texts referred to in the notes, the 
prophecy and its accomplishment will be placed 
in immediate contact, so that those who wish to 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



161 



examine this subject for themselves may see how 
utterly impossible it was for any thing like chance 
or human imposture to have furnished such an 
exquisite harmony.* 

When we look at the very first page of man's 
apostacy, we find the Great Deliverer promised, 
as that seed of the woman who was to bruise the 
head of the serpent, f This mysterious personage 
was to be of the seed of Abraham. $ He was to 
belong to the tribe of Judah.§ He was to be a 
member of the royal house of David. || He was 
to be born at Bethleham Judah, the city of 
David.^f He was to be miraculously conceived 
and born of a virgin.** He was to be carried 



* See a very able Discourse on " the Object and End of 
the Prophetic Dispensation," by the late Archibald M'Lean. 
Works, vol. iv. 12mo. p. 283. 

t Compare Gen. iii. 15. with Luke i. 29= — 36. and Gal. 
iv. 4. 

X Com. Gen. xxii. 18. with Gal. iii. 16, 17. and Heb. 
ii. 16. 

§ Com. Gen. xlix. 10. with Heb. vii. 14. 

|| Com. 1 Sam. vii. 12 — 17. Isa. xi. 1 — 6. Jer. xxiii. 
5, 6. with Luke i. 32, 69. Rom. 1. 3. 

\ Com. Micah v. 2. with Matt. ii. 1, 5, 6. and Luke ii. 
4,11. 

** Com. Isa. vii. 14. with Matt. i. 20—24. 



162 



THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



into Egypt, and called out of it.* He was to have 
Elias, or John the Baptist as his forerunner, f 
He was to confirm his mission and doctrine by 
miracles 4 He was to make a public though 
lowly entrance into Jerusalem, riding upon a 
colt, the foal of an ass.§ He was to be rejected 
of his own countrymen the Jews.|| He was to 
be betrayed by one of his disciples. % He was 
to be sold for thirty pieces of silver.** He was 
to be scourged, mocked, and spit upon. ft He 
was to be nailed to the cross, by his hands and 
his feet-4+ He was to be numbered with the 

* Compare Hos. xi. 1. with Matt. ii. 13—16. 

f Com. Isa. xl. 3, 4. Mai. iii. 1. and iv. 5. with Matt, 
iii. 1—4. xvii. 10—14. Luke i. 17. vii. 27. 

| Com. Isa. xxxv. 5, 6. with Matt. xi. 3 — 7. John v. 
36. and Acts ii. 22. 

§ Com. Zech. ix. 9. and Psalms cxviii. 25, 26. with 
Matt. xxi. 2—12. and John xii. 12—19. 

|| Com. Isa. viii. 14, 15. xviii. 16. liii.3. and Psa. cxviii. 
22. with Matt. xxi. 42—45. John i. 10, 11. xii. 37— 40. 
and xv. 22—26. 

% Com. Psa. xii. 9. with John xiii. 18. 

** Com. Zech. xi. 12. with Matt. xxvi. 14, 15. and 
xxvii. 3 — 11. 

tt Com. Isa. 1. 6. with Matt. xxvi. 67, 68. and xxvii. 
26—32. 

tt Com. Psa. xxii. 16. with Luke xxiii, 33. and John 
xix. 17, 18. 



OF CHRISTIANITY". 



163 



transgressors.* He was to be mocked and 
reviled while on the cross. f He was to have 
gall and vinegar to drink 4 His garments 
were to be parted, and upon his vesture lots were 
to be cast.§ He was to be cut off from the land 
of the living by a violent death. || He was to be 
pierced, but not a bone of him to be broken.^! 
He was to make his grave with the rich.** He 
was not to see corruption. ft He was to rise 
from the dead.$+ He was to ascend into 
heaven, sit at the right hand of God, and 
pour out the Holy Spirit in his various gifts 
upon men.§§ 



* Com. Isa. liii. 12. with Luke xxii. 37. and xxiii. 33. 
f Com. Psa. xxii. 7, 8. with Matt, xxvii. 34, 35. 
i Com. Psa. lxix. 21. with Matt, xxvii. 34, 48. 
§ Com. Psa. xxii. 18. with Matt, xxvii. 35. and John 
xix. 23, 24. 

|| Com. Isa. liii. Dan ix. 26. with John xix. 30. Acts 
ii.23. 

t Com. Zech. xii. 10. Exod. xii. 46. Psa. xxxiv. 20. 
with John xix. 33—38. 

** Com. Isa. liii. 9. with Matt, xxvii. 57—61. 

tt Com. Psa. xvi. 10. with Acts ii. 25—32. xiii. 34—38. 

tt Com. Psa. ii. 7. xvi. 11. and Isa. liii. 8. with Acts ii. 
30, 31. xiii. 33, 34. 

§§ Com. Psa. lxviii. 18. and ex. i. Joel ii. 28. with 
Eph. iv. 8—13. Mark xvi. 19. Acts ii. 33. 



T64 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

His divine dignity was also distinctly marked 
in the prophetic testimony. iVccording to the 
flesh, he was to be of the seed of David ; but 
beyond this there was a view of his character 
which exhibited him in all the glory of essential 
and uncreated Godhead. He was to be called 
Immanuel.* He was described as the mighty 
God.f He was spoken of as Jehovah our 
righteousness 4 He was portrayed as the Son 
of God.§ He was declared to be David's 
Lord. || 

Nor were the offices which Messiah was to 
sustain overlooked by the omniscient spirit of 
the prophetic dispensation. He was to be a 
prophet like unto Moses. % He was to be a 
priest for ever, after the order of Melchisedec.** 
He was to be an anointed King, on Zion's holy 

* Com. Isa. vii. 14, with Mark i. 23. 
t Com. Isa. ix. 6. with Tit. ii. 13. 
| Com. Jer. xxxiii. 5, 6. with 1 Cor. i. 30, 31. 
§ Com. 2 Sam. vii. 14. Psa. ii. 7, 12. with Rom. i. 3, 4. 
Heb. i. 5. 

|| Com. Psa. ex. 1. with Matt. xxii. 42—46. 

f Com. Deut. xviii. 18. with Acts iii. 22—24. 

** Com. Psa. ex. 4. with Heb. v. 5, 6. vii. viii. ix. x. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 165 

hill, — that is, the Messiah and Sovereign of his 
church.* 

In like manner the spiritual empire of the Son 
of God is portrayed in the prophetic page. 
Its nature, its extent, its duration, its blessedness, 
its happy subjects, are all described. f And 
though many of the predictions which relate to 
that empire are not yet fulfilled, and though 
some of them will not realize their accomplish- 
ment till the consummation of all things; yet 
enough has been fulfilled to shew that Christ and 
his kingdom are the distinct objects of reference, 
and that what is yet unaccomplished shall ere 
long have the light of Divine Providence shed 
upon it. 

When I look at the number, minuteness, and 
singular character of the prophetic testimonies of 
the Jewish Scriptures to Messiah, and compare 
them with their exact and circumstantial accom- 

* Cora. Psa. ii. 6. Psa. ii. 2. Dan. ix. 26. with John 
xx. 30,31. Actsii. 36. 

f Com. Psa. xlv. 6, 7. Isa. ix. 6—8. xi. 1—11. xlix. 
6. with Gal. iii. 8. Heb. i. 8, 9. Luke i. 30—34. Rom. 
xiv. 12. Acts xiii. 47. 



166 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

plishment in the person, office, and empire of 
Jesus of Nazareth, I am equally astounded at 
the unbelief of Jews and Infidels. How can 
they resist such a flood of light ? Upon any con- 
ceivable scheme of adjustment, how can they, 
in their present state of mind, account for the 
predictions and their fulfilment! Let it be re- 
membered that Christians did not construct the 
prophecies ; they formed part of a document in 
the hands of their bitterest enemies ; and let it 
be equally remembered, that the principal facts 
in the history of the Son of God which verify 
the prophecies, were realities which the most 
inveterate infidels have been compelled to admit. 
Let the wondrous coincidence, then, be accounted 
for on any other principle but the admission of a 
great scheme of prophecy originating in the 
divine prescience, and intended to vindicate the 
claims of a revelation which has been vouchsafed 
by God to his bewildered and erring children. 

I know of no method of evading the force of 
the argument derived from prophecy, but by the 
supposition, that the apostles of our Lord, finding 
in the Jewish Scriptures a vast number of pre- 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 167 

dictive statements, concerning an illustrious 
personage who was to rise up in the nation of 
Israel, accommodated themselves, with their 
leader, to the scheme thus perceived by them. 
But the entire character and conduct of the men, 
their benevolence, their contempt for every thing- 
like human ambition and applause, the purity 
and integrity of their manners, their fearless 
exposure of themselves to persecution and death, 
the total absence of any thing like inferior motive 
to sustain them, forbids us, upon all the ordinary 
calculations of human nature, to conceive of 
them as heartless deceivers and villains. If 
they were so, it may be safely affirmed that they 
acted a part the very opposite of all the other 
impostors that ever lived. 

But supposing they were deceivers, and that 
they made themselves agents to the fulfilment of 
the J ewish prophecies ; let us see how this can 
be borne out by the facts of the case. This 
inquiry is so well met by the present Bishop of 
Chester, that I cannot do a greater service to my 
readers than to quote his own words on the 
subject, 



168 



THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



"It may be thought/' says he, " that a design 
like that attributed to the followers of Jesus 
would be greatly assisted by the prophecies 
recorded in their national Scriptures, and point- 
ing to some remarkable personage who was 
expected to appear. 

" 1 . For example : the time of this appearance 
was fixed by the prophet Daniel at about four 
hundred and ninety years from his own days ; 
which so closely corresponded with the birth of 
Jesus, that such an event was looked for, by 
< devout persons,' at the very period when it 
occurred.* This would be, as was before ob- 
served, a circumstance greatly in their favour. 

" 2. The next thing to be considered by the 
framer of this deceit, would be the place of their 
leader's birth. Jesus was born at Bethlehem. 
Upon consulting their Scriptures, they would 
find this passage respecting Bethlehem : 6 Thou 
Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little 
among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee 
shall he come forth unto me that is to be the 



* Dan. ix. 24. Luke ii. 25. 



OP CHRISTIANITY. 169 

ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been 
from of old, for everlasting.'* This would prove, 
beyond what could be anticipated, an assistance 
of their design. 

" 3. It seemed to be intimated in the prophe- 
cies, that the deliverer who was to come should 
be preceded by a forerunner, who might awaken 
the attention of the people to him. For it was 
written, 6 The voice of him that crieth in the 
wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord ; 
make straight in the desert a highway for our 
God.'f And again, 6 Behold, I will send my 
messenger, and he shall prepare the way before 
me ; and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall sud- 
denly come into his temple.' £ Now it was 
notorious that a singular character, John, called 
6 the Baptist,' had appeared a short time before 
Jesus began his ministry, pretending to be this 
messenger, and nothing more, and directing his 
followers to one who was to 6 come after him/ 
This was another coincidence equally wonderful 
and favourable. 



* Micah v. 3. t Isa. xl. & \ Malaclii nl 1. 
0. 



170 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



" 4. Further, as to the most important parts : 
the way in which Jesus had lived, and had 
been received, and died. His character, as repre- 
sented in the Gospels, had been peculiar in 
every respect ; but especially remarkable for the 
union of meekness and constancy which it dis- 
played. 

" Of unknown origin and humble parentage, 
he had attracted considerable notice, and many 
followers ; yet he had not been generally ac- 
knowledged among his countrymen, and those 
who adhered to him were not the great and 
powerful. His life, upon the whole, was one of 
trial and hardship, not one of triumph and exal- 
tation. In the end, he was sentenced to death 
with the notoriously wicked ; and suffered a 
punishment, which even his judge confessed that 
his conduct had not deserved. Yet, though 
dying with malefactors, he was laid in a rich 
and honourable tomb.* 

" A character answering this description was 
portrayed by that prophet who had always 



* Matt, xxvii, 57—00, 



OF CHRISTIANITY 171 

been considered as most particular in what 
respected the future Messiah.* 

"It cannot be denied that the existence of 
these ancient prophecies would be very advan- 
tageous to men setting out with the purpose in 
question. But it is time to ask in our turn, how 
they came to find these prophecies ready to 
their hand ? — prophecies of such a nature, that 
no man could have contrived a scheme depen- 
dent upon them, because they could not command 
the fact by which they were to be fulfilled. 
With respect to the birth-place, for example : 
in order that it might happen to be Bethlehem, 
it was requisite that a general census should be 
held, convening all the inhabitants of the country 
to their chief town ; by which means alone the 
mother of J esus was called away from her usnal 
residence, and her infant born at Bethlehem, 
instead of Nazareth. The preparatory ministry 
of the Baptist was equally beyond the control 
of the disciples. So were the minute details of 
incidents, which agree in a wonderful manner 
with the circumstantial narrative. The entrance 

* Isaiah liii. 1 — 9. 



172 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

of Jesus into Jerusalem, at once humble and 
triumphant.* The manner of his death, and his 
own countrymen the cause. f The peculiar 
indignities which he underwent : the very words 
of mockery used against him.J The price 
which Judas received for his treachery. The 
purpose to which that money was applied. § 

" Passages of this nature could not have been 
introduced by the apostles into the existing 
scriptures, because, as their countrymen were 
generally hostile to the design, such an attempt 
must have proved fatal to their pretensions. 
And further, because the books among which 
these scattered sentences are found, had now 
been extensively diffused during a period of 
three hundred years in a foreign language, 
defying the imposture of the whole nation, if the 
whole nation had concurred in the design. 

" We are reduced, then, to the necessity of 
supposing that the followers of Jesus, desiring 

* Com. Matt. xxi. 1, &c. with Zecli. ix. 9. 
t Zech. xiii. 6. 
J Com. Isa. 1. 6. Ps. xxii., lxix. 20. with Matt, xxvii. 
§ Com. Zech. xi. 12. with Matt. xxvi. 15. xxvii. 8. &c, 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



173 



to deify their teacher, selected from their na- 
tional Scriptures these pointed allusions to 
circumstances like his, which happened to be 
written there, and brought them forward to 
confirm his pretensions. 

" But surely to ascribe coincidences like these 
to chance, to allege that all these passages were 
thrown out at random in the Jewish Scriptures, 
and that the circumstances of the birth, and life, 
and character, and death of Jesus, turned out so 
as to agree with them, is to attribute to chance 
what never did or could take place by chance ; 
and in itself far more improbable than the event 
which such a solution is intended to disprove, 
For, allow to Jesus the authority which he 
claims, and every difficulty vanishes. We 
should then expect to find prophetic intimations 
of his great purpose, and of the way in which 
it was to be effected. We should expect to 
find them, too, just what they are ; not united 
and brought together in a way of formal descrip- 
tion, which could only be a provision for impos- 
ture ; but such scattered hints and allusions as, 
after the event has occurred, serve to shew that 
Q2 



174 



THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



it was predicted, by a comparison of the event 
and the prophecy. 

" It ought to be observed, in addition, that if 
the disciples of J esus had framed their story and 
their representation of facts, with a view of 
obtaining this collateral support, they would have 
been more diligent and ostentatious in pointing 
out the circumstances of resemblance. They 
would have anticipated the labours of those 
writers who have made it their business to shew 
the completion of prophecy in the events related 
in the gospels. But, on the contrary, they bring 
these things forward in an historical rather than 
an argumentative way, and commonly leave 
the deductions which may be drawn from them 
to the discernment of after times.''* 

I must be allowed to remark, before dismiss- 
ing this branch of evidence, that though the 
prophecies of the Old and New Testaments 
chiefly relate to the Messiah, and are all so con- 

* " The Evidence of Christianity derived from its 
Nature and Reception." By John Bird Sumner, DcD.. 
Lord Bishop of Chester. Fourth Edition. 12mo. 
pp, 124—133. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 175 

structed as, in their accomplishment, to add 
strength to the evidence which confirms the 
Christian revelation, they are by no means con- 
fined to the delineation of his character and 
claims. They occupy a range most extensive, 
and carry the mind over the eventful history of 
the Jewish nation, and. of almost all the nations 
of heathen antiquity. Let it never be forgotten, 
that Nineveh's predicted ruin has come upon 
it;* — that Babylon, in all its boasted splen- 
dour, has been " swept with the besom of 
threatened destruction ;'**t — that Tyre, the great 
port of the ancient world, has become, accord- 
ing to the warnings of Ezekiel, a place only for 
the drying of fishermen's nets;£ — that Egypt, 
the mother of arts, has become "the basest of 
kingdoms,' 5 and has never since been able 
"to exalt herself among the nations," as if to 
shew that all the events of futurity are naked 
and open to that omniscient Spirit who foretold 
her doom, and predicted her permanent humilia- 
tion. § 

■ Xahuni i. ii. iii. t Isa. xiii. xiv. 

i Ezek. xxvi. 4, o. § Ezek. xxix. 14 ; L3» 



176 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



Nor, in contemplating the great scheme of 
prophecy, and the support which it yields to the 
truth of Revelation, must we lose sight of the 
destinies of the Jewish nation.* In the fearful 
destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman army, — 
in the dispersion and long-continued peculiarity 
of the seed of Abraham, — in the contempt, per- 

* " The great lawgiver of the Jews," observes Mr. 
Home, (in his Introduction, vol. i. p. 327,) " foretold that 
they should be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth, 
—scattered among all people, from one end of the earth, even 
unto the other, — find no ease or rest, — be oppressed and crushed 
always, — be left few in number among the heathen, — pine 
away in their iniquity in their enemies'' land, — and become an 
astonishment, a proverb, and a bye-word unto all nations* 
These predictions were literally fulfilled during their sub- 
jection to the Chaldeans and Romans ; and, in later times, 
in all the nations where they have been dispersed. Moses 
foretold that their enemies would besiege and take their 
cities ; and this prophecy was fulfilled by Shishak, King 
of Egypt; Shalmaneser, King of Assyria; Nebuchad- 
nezzer, Antiochus, Epiphanes, Sosius, and Herod ; and 
finally by Titus. Moses foretold that such grievous 
famines should prevail during those sieges, that they should 
eat the flesh of their sons and daughters. This predic- 
tion was fulfilled about six hundred years after the time of 
Moses, when Samaria was besieged by the King of Syria ; 
also, about nine hundred years after that time, among the 
Jews, during the siege of Jerusalem, before the Babylonish 
captivity ; and finally, fifteen hundred years after, at the 
siege of Jerusalem by the Romans. Though the Hebrews 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 177 

secution, and infamy which they have so long 
endured, — in the promulgation of the gospel 
among Gentile tribes, — in the many and hate- 
ful corruptions of the religion of Jesus which 
have been introduced through the medium of 
Anti- Christian powers, — and in the preservation 
and growing triumphs of the Christian faith, we 

were to be as the stars of heaven for multitude, Moses 
predicted that they should be few in number, and his 
prophecy was fulfilled : for, in the last siege of Jerusalem, 
Josephus tells us that an infinite multitude perished by 
famine ; and he computes the total number who perished 
by it, and by the war in Jerusalem, and other parts of 
Judea, at one million two hundred and forty thousand four 
hundred and ninety, besides ninety-nine thousand two hun- 
dred who were made prisoners, and sold unto their enemies 
for bondmen and bondwomen ; and after their last overthrow 
by Hadrian, many thousands of them were sold; and 
those for whom purchasers could not be found (Moses 
foretold that no man would buy them) were transported into 
Egypt, where they perished by shipwreck or famine, or 
were massacred by the inhabitants. Since the destruction 
of Jerusalem, they have been scattered among all nations ; 
among whom they have found no ease, nor have the soles of 
their feet had rest ; they have been oppressed and spoiled ever 
more, especially in the east, where the tyranny exercised 
over them is so severe, as to afford a literal fulfilment of 
the prediction of Moses, — Thy life shall hang in doubt 
before thee, and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt 
have no assurance of thy life. Yet, notwithstanding all 
their oppressions, they have still continued a separate 



178 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

have such indubitable fulfilments of the pro- 
phetic record, that he who refuses to embrace, 
as divine, the wondrous volume of which it 
forms such a distinguished part, sins against all 
the laws of moral evidence, and, at the same 
time, risks his eternal salvation by rejecting the 
counsel of God against himself. 

4. The Evidence of Christianity derived from 
a correct estimate of its early success. 

It would be most inconclusive to infer the super- 
people, without incorporating with the nations ; and they 
have become an astonishment and a bye-word among all the 
nations whither they have been carried since their punish- 
ment has been inflicted. The very name of a Jew has 
been used as a term of peculiar reproach and infamy. 
Finally, it was foretold, that their plagues should be wonder- 
ful, even great plagues, and of long continuance. And have 
not their plagues continued more than seventeen hundred 
years? In comparison of them, their former captivities 
were very short ; during their captivity in Chaldea, Ezekiel 
and Daniel prophesied ; but now they have no true pro- 
phet to foretel the end of their calamities. What nation 
has suffered so much, and yet endured so long? What 
nation has subsisted as a distinct people in their own 
country so long as the Jews have done in their dispersion 
into all countries? And what a standing miracle is 
thus exhibited to the world in the fulfilment, at this very 
time, of prophecies delivered considerably more than three 
thousand years ago ! What a permanent attestation is it 
to the divine legation of Moses !" 



OF CHRISTIANITY, 



179 



natural origin of Christianity from the mere fact 
of its success ; inasmuch as some of the greatest 
impostures the world ever knew have obtained, 
for many ages, a most powerful and extensive 
dominion over the human mind. The early preva- 
lence of the gospel is, in itself, no decisive proof of 
its divine origin. Ere it can be regarded as such, 
a number of circumstances must combine with 
the fact of its success, which admit of no just or 
rational solution but the admission of the finger 
of God. The question then is, did such circum- 
stances evince themselves in the early triumphs 
of Christianity ? And, if they did, wherein did 
they consist ? and how do they admit of being 
exhibited in the shape of a conclusive argument 
for the truth and divinity of the gospel ? 

It is then a fact that Jesus of Xazareth was 
put to death in the reign of Tiberius, by the 
order of Pontius Pilate, his Procurator.* It is 
a fact that as early as the time of Claudius, who 
died within twenty years of the crucifixion, the 
religious assemblies of the Christians were pro- 



* See Tacitus. Anna!, xv. 44, 



180 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



scribed under open pretext that they were with- 
drawing men from the worship of the gods.* It 
is a fact, that in the reign of Nero, the followers 
of Christ endured persecutions of the most fear- 
ful kind, and that this wicked despot endeavoured 
to fix upon them the stigma of burning Rome, 
though it was justly and loudly charged on 
himself. f It is a fact that Pliny the younger, 

* See Suetonius in Claud. 25. 
t See Tacitus, as above. I give Paley's translation. 
" But neither these exertions, nor his largesses to the people, 
nor his offerings to the gods, did away the infamous impu- 
tation under which Nero lay, of having ordered the city to 
be set on fire. To put an end therefore to this report, he laid 
the guilt and inflicted the most cruel punishments upon a set 
of people who were held in abhorrence for their crimes, 
and called by the vulgar, Christians. The founder of that 
name was Christ, who suffered death in the reign of Tibe- 
rius, under his Procurator, Pontius Pilate. The perni- 
cious superstition, thus checked for awhile, broke out again, 
and spread not only over Judea, where the evil originated, 
but through Rome also, whither every thing bad upon earth 
finds its way, and is practised. Some who confessed their 
sect were first seized ; and afterwards, by their informa- 
tion, a vast multitude were apprehended, who were con- 
victed, not so much of the crime of burning Rome, as of 
hatred to mankind. Their sufferings and their execution 
were aggravated by insult and mockery, for some were dis- 
guised in the skins of wild beasts and worried to death by 
dogs, some were crucified, and others were wrapt in pitched 
shirts and set on fire when the days closed, that they might 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



181 



a Proconsul under the Emperor Trajan, who 
was contemporary with Ignatius, and who nou- 
rished about seventy-five years after the death 
of Christ, describes the Christian assemblies in 
Bithynia and Pontus as consisting of u a vast 
multitude' of all ages and sexes, and speaks* of 

serve as lights to illuminate the night. Nero lent his own 
gardens for these executions; and exhibited at the same 
time a mock Circensian entertainment, being a spectator of 
the whole in the dress of a charioteer, sometimes mingling 
with the crowd on foot, and sometimes viewing the spec- 
tacle from his car. This conduct made the sufferers pitied ; 
and though they were criminals, and deserving the severest 
punishments, yet they were considered as sacrificed, not so 
much out of regard to the public good, as to gratify the 
cruelty of one man." 

* " Ingens multitudo," a vast multitude, is the histo- 
rian's expression. I insert the whole letter according to 
Milner's translation, though he has not preserved the full 
force of the original in his rendering of this expression. 
" C. Pliny to Trajan, Emperor. 
" Health. — It is my usual custom, Sir, to refer all things 
of which I harbour any doubts, to you. For who can 
better direct my judgment in its hesitation, or instruct my 
understanding in its ignorance ? I never had the fortune 
to be present at any examination of Christians before I 
came into this province. I am, therefore, at a loss to 
determine what is the usual object either of inquiry or 
of punishment, and to what length either of them is to be 
carried. It has also been with me a question very pro- 
blematical, whether any distinction should be made 
between the young and the old, the tender and the robust ; 



182 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



Christianity as an inveterate superstition which 



* — whether any room should be given for repentance, or 
the guilt of Christianity once incurred is not to be expiated 
by the most unequivocal retraction ; — whether the name 
itself, abstracted from any flagitiousness of conduct, or the 
crimes connected with the name, be the object of punish- 
ment. In the mean time, this has been my method, with 
respect to those who were brought before me as Christians. 
I asked them whether they were Christians : if they plead- 
ed guilty, I interrogated them twice afresh, with a menace 
of capital punishment. In case of obstinate perseverance, 
I ordered them to be executed. For of this I had no doubt, 
whatever was the nature of their religion, that a sullen and 
obstinate inflexibility called for the vengeance of the 
magistrate. Some were infected with the same madness 
whom, on account of their privilege of citizenship, I 
reserved to be sent to Rome to be referred to your tribunal. 
In the course of this business, informations pouring in, as 
is usual when they are encouraged, more cases occurred. 
An anonymous libel was exhibited, with a catalogue of 
names of persons, who yet declared that they were not 
Christians then, or ever had been ; and they repeated after 
me an invocation of the gods and of your image, which, for 
this purpose, I had ordered to be brought with the images 
of the deities ; — they performed sacred rites with wine and 
frankincense, and execrated Christ ; none of which things, I 
am told, a real Christian can ever be compelled to do. On 
this account I dismissed them. Others, named by an in- 
former, first affirmed, and then denied the charge of Chris- 
tianity ; declaring that they had been Christians, but had 
ceased to be so ; some three years ago, others still longer, 
some even twenty years ago. All of them worshipped 
your image and the statues of the gods, and also execrated 
Christ. And this was the account which they gave of the 
nature of the religion they once had professed, whether it 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



183 



had spread itself, not only through cities, but 



deserves the name of crime or error ; — namely, that they 
were accustomed, on a stated day, to meet before day-light, 
and to repeat among themselves an hymn to Christ as to a 
god, and to bind themselves by an oath, with an obligation 
of not committing any wickedness, but, on the contrary, 
of abstaining from thefts, robberies, and adulteries ; — also, 
of not violating their promise, or denying a pledge; — after 
which, it was their custom to separate, and meet again 
at a promiscuous harmless meal, from which last prac- 
tice they however desisted after the publication of my 
edict, in which, agreeably to your orders, I forbade any 
societies of that sort; on which account, I judged it the 
more necessary to inquire, by torture, from two females, 
who were said to be deaconesses, what is the real truth. 
But nothing could I collect, except a depraved and exces- 
sive superstition. Deferring, therefore, any further inves- 
tigation, I determined to consult you ; for the number 
of culprits is so great, as to call for serious consultation. 
Many persons are informed against, of every age, and both 
sexes ; and more still will be in the same situation. The 
contagion of the superstition hath spread, not only through 
cities, but even villages and the country. Not that I think 
it impossible to check and to correct it. The success of 
my endeavours hitherto forbids such desponding thoughts ; 
for the temples, once almost desolate, begin to be frequented, 
and the sacred solemnities, which had long been intermitted, 
are now attended afresh ; and the sacrificial victims are 
now sold everywhere, which once could scarce find a pur- 
chaser. Whence I conclude, that many might be reclaimed 
were the hope of impunity, on repentance, absolutely 
confirmed." 

The Emperor Trajarts reply to Pliny. 
" You have done perfectly right, my dear Pliny, in the 
inquiry which you have made concerning Christians. For 



184 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



over villages and the whole country.* It is a 
fact, that Christian churches were established 
in every province of the Roman empire within 
a very brief period of the death of Christy and 
that thousands and tens of thousands of new 
converts maintained, with unshaken confidence, 
their adherence to the facts and promises of the 
gospel amidst the heaviest persecutions and 
calamities that ever befel mortals in this vale of 
tears. It is a fact that the first propagators of 
Christianity were only fishermen of Galilee, and 
that they sought and obtained no aid from human 

truly no one general rule can be laid down which will 
apply itself to all cases. These people must not be sought 
after ; if they are brought before you and convicted, let 
them be capitally punished, yet with this restriction, that 
if any renounce Christianity, and evidence his sincerity by 
supplicating our gods, however suspected he may be for the 
past, he shall obtain pardon for the future, on his repent- 
ance. But anonymous libels in no case ought to be attended 
to; for the precedent would be of the worst sort, and per- 
fectly incongruous to the maxims of my government." 
* See Plin. Epist. Lib. x. Ep. 91. 
t " The rapidity and extent of the propagation of the 
gospel were such as to prove its divine origin. On the 
very first day of its promulgation, three thousand were 
converted ; these soon increased to five thousand. Multi- 
tudes, both of men and women, were afterwards daily 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



185 



power in the prosecution of their extraordinary 
undertaking. It is a fact, that the experiment 
of Christianity was made in one of the most 
enlightened and refined periods in the history of 
the world, and on a theatre which laid it open 
to the scrutiny and detection of all Greece and 
Rome. It is a fact, that the first messengers of 
the cross entered into no compromise with the 
vices and corruptions of mankind, but that they 
denounced every system of evil, and sought only 
to win men's applause by bringing them to per- 
ceive and acknowledge the exquisite loveliness 

added to the new religion. Before the end of thirty- 
years, the gospel had spread through Judaea, Galilee, 
Samaria, almost all the numerous districts of Lesser Asia ; 
through Greece, and the Islands of the iEgean Sea, and 
the sea-coast of Africa, and had passed on to the capital of 
Italy. Great multitudes believed at Antioch in Syria, at 
Joppa, Ephesus, Corinth, Thessalonica, Bersea, Iconium, 
Derbe, Antioch in Pisidia, at Lydda and Saron. Con- 
verts, also, are mentioned at Tyre, Caesarea, Troas, Athens, 
Philippi, Lystra, Damascus. Thus far the sacred narra- 
tive conducts us. The religion being thus widely diffused, 
the New Testament carries us no further- But all eccle- 
siastical and profane history concurs in describing the rapid 
progress of the new doctrine. Tacitus, Suetonius, Juve- 
nal, Pliny, Martial, Marcus Aurelius, sufficiently testify 
the propagation of Christianity. 5 ' — See Bishop Wilsoa'^ 
Evidences, vol. i, p. 260, 12mo. 



186 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

of truth, and by teaching them to submit to a 
course of religious and moral discipline, which 
made them kind and forgiving, peaceful and 
holy. It is a fact, that the doctrine taught by 
the Apostles of Jesus of Nazareth was, in many 
respects, new ; that it proclaimed facts of a 
strictly miraculous nature ; that it sternly opposed 
every existing system of religion ; that it rebuked 
and condemned those vices and depraved habits 
which universally prevailed ; that, nevertheless, 
it rapidly spread, and that in less than three 
centuries it subverted the religion of pagan 
Rome, and established itself on the throne of the 
Caesars. 

Had Christianity been adapted to the de- 
praved inclinations of the human heart ; had it 
flattered men's pride, ambition, and vain-glory ; 
had it promised or secured worldly honour and 
prosperity ; had it been hailed by the great 
and noble of mankind ; had it been supported 
by human power, and defended by the swords 
and shields of the earth ; had conquering armies 
been its heralds, and the spoils of enemies its 
rewards, — its success would then have been no 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



187 



mystery, and its triumphs would then have 
afforded no proof of supernatural interference. 
But if the reverse of all this was the case, — if 
Christianity had nothing in it to pamper human 
corruption, — nothing to minister to the pride of 
the human heart, — nothing to present to its 
disciples in the shape of worldly allurement, — - 
nothing to draw around it men of high renown, — - 
nothing of power to terrify or subdue, — nothing 
to support the courage of its professors but the 
testimony of a good conscience and the hopes of 
a better life, — what shall be said if after all it 
triumphed ? Yes, if while it opposes itself to 
all the world it prevail, what shall be said ? — 
if in the absence of all the ordinary causes 
and weapons of success it prevail, what shall 
be said ? Let us look at the facts of this case, 
and impartially determine if there was any thing 
merely human in the original agencies of Chris- 
tianity to account for the results which followed 
then* employment. The results are these : — the 
whole Roman empire, in a few short years, was 
pervaded by the gospel,- — multitudes of Jews and 
Pagans were won over to the sincere belief of the 



188 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

facts of Christianity, — the very aspects and insti- 
tutions of society were completely changed and 
re-modelled by the new doctrine, — the flames 
of persecution were borne with exemplary for- 
titude, patience, and forgiveness, — the cause 
triumphed by means of its very disasters, — and 
the power which attempted to crush it at last 
yielded to its mysterious influence. 

Such are the results ; — and what are the 
apparent agencies by which they were effected ? — 
The doctrine of one who was crucified at Jeru- 
salem between two thieves, — the preaching of 
a few illiterate fishermen of Galilee, — and the 
exemplary zeal and consistency of those who 
ranked themselves as the disciples of the cross. 

If, then, the agencies of Christianity were 
merely human, or if they were nothing more 
than a system of deliberately adjusted imposture, 
how comes it to pass that there was so little in 
the apparent process to account for the effect 
produced? If all was of man, how did it happen 
that he constructed a scheme in the very teeth 
of human prejudice ? and, more than this, how 
did it happen that a scheme so constructed 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



189 



obtained a footing among mankind ? Was it so 
easy a thing to subvert Jewish prejudice, in the 
very city of Jerusalem, and to silence the oracles 
of heathenism where they had ruled with des- 
potic sway, that twelve fishermen, just quitting 
their nets, and determining to become the foun- 
ders of a new religion, should be deemed equal 
to the task? Let such a case be imagined to 
take place in our own age and nation. For if 
Christianity be not from heaven, nothing forbids 
the success of such another experiment on the 
credulity of mankind now any more than for- 
merly. But does any one in his sober senses 
believe that it would succeed, or that it would 
produce even any considerable impression ? We 
have had, it is true, occasional excitement pro- 
duced by certain extravagant persons, but their 
partial success has mainly depended upon their 
appeal to the general data of Christianity, and 
upon their professed adherence to its cardinal 
doctrines. We might challenge all the philoso- 
phers who ever lived to invent or to propagate 
any imposture answering to the character of 
Christianity. The thing is impossible. Its facts 



190 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



and its success are solitary examples in the 
history of our world. Paganism and the religion 
of the False Prophet have nothing in common 
with them.* The former accumulated its ma- 
terials by a progressive departure from all right 
notions of the moral character of God, and by 
its marked coincidence with every thing base 
and polluted in human nature ; — and the latter 
was propagated at the edge of the sword, and 

* " No religion, purely as a religion,' 5 observes Dr. 
Wilson, the present Bishop of Calcutta, "was ever pro- 
pagated but the Christian. Heathenism was never a 
matter of dissemination or conversion. It had no creed, 
no origin distinct from the corrupt traces of a remote 
fabulous antiquity. It was a creature of human mould, 
contrived for the sake of human legislation. The Greeks 
and Romans imposed it not on their subject nations. 
Mahomedanism was the triumph of the sword. Conquest, 
not religious faith, was its manifest object; rapine, violence, 
and bloodshed were its credentials. 

" No religion was ever attempted to be spread through 
the world by the means of instruction and persuasion, 
with an authority of its own, but Christianity. The idea 
never came into the mind of man to propagate a religion 
having for its set design and exclusive object the en- 
lightening of mankind with a doctrine professedly divine, 
till Christianity said to her disciples. K Go ye into all the 
world, and preach the Gospel to every creature." — See 
" The Evidences of Christianity stated, &c. in two 

vols. 12mo. Second edition, pp. '2o9, '260. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 191 

amidst all those promises of sensual indulgence 
which are so grateful to a nature prone to the 
love of sin. Bat Christianity stood forth in the 
spotless purity of its divine Author, and refused 
to own any as its true disciples who remained 
under the dominion of then crimes. It assailed 
men with none of the weapons of human power, 
but made its triumphant appeal to the under- 
standing and the heart, It boasted of no earthly 
natronage ; but went forth in a secret and hid- 
den power, which was " mighty to the pulling 
down of strong holds.'*' All weakness in its 
exterior agencies, it became " the wisdom of 
God, and the power of God to the salvation " 
of thousands and tens of thousands who em- 
braced its merciful provisions. It changed the 
very face of society, and effected revolutions in 
the manners, customs, and laws of mankind, 
which all other systems had failed to achieve. 
It is unphilosophical in the highest degree to 
trace its early prevalence to the mere influence 
of ordinary and secondary causes. There is 
no problem of the world's history bearing the 
least resemblance to it. The experience of 



192 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

mankind supplies no illustration of any thing 
like the successes of Christianity springing from 
mere human instrumentality, whether well or 
ill directed. Must men then acknowledge a 
miracle in their zeal to get rid of a miraculous 
history ? This is indeed very preposterous ; 
but it is nevertheless the condition to which 
those reduce themselves who would attempt to 
account for the mighty revolution produced by 
Christianity upon mere natural principles. They 
discard the doctrine of miracles, they repudiate 
the testimony by which the miraculous facts 
of the Gospel are handed down to mankind ; 
but they call upon their disciples to believe, 
without a tittle of evidence, that the fishermen 
of Galilee could have done all that they did, 
and that Christianity could have gained all its 
conquests, without the slightest aid from hea- 
ven, — nay, though imposture and deception 
were written on the entire undertaking. We 
demand of them an illustrative example, and we 
are sure that they cannot produce it. In the 
absence, then, of all experience to guide oar 
course, and in opposition to all enlightened 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



193 



calculations of what human agency can effect, 
in certain given instances, we are called upon 
by infidels to believe that the early successes of 
Christianity might be traced to the operation of 
secondary causes.* To the mind of any un- 
prejudiced person, this will present all the start- 
ling difficulty of a miracle, without any of that 
credible testimony by which alone a miracle can 
be shewn to have taken place. 

It is nothing short of an insult offered to my 
understanding, first to point me to the great 
moral and intellectual revolution which was pro- 
duced by Christianity, within a very short period 

* The reader will perceive that the author has not taken 
any distinct notice of Gibbon's attempt to trace the success 
of Christianity to the influence of second causes. The 
reason is simply this, that he deemed it better to pursue 
the argument without encumbering it by any specific re- 
ference to the special pleadings and inconclusive reasonings 
of that great but unhappy man. The objections, how- 
ever, have been met, though they have not been alluded 
to ; and, indeed, it is matter of just surprise that arguments 
so weak and futile should have ever been raised to the 
notoriety of a grave refutation. Those who wish to see 
this sceptical philosopher exhibited in his proper light, are 
recommended to read the Rev. A. Reed's discourse on 
" The Evidence of Revelation derived from the success 
of the Gospel," See Note, p. 197. 

S 



194 



THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



of the death of its founder, and then to assign 
as its sole cause, the zeal, energy, and talent of 
the fishermen of Galilee ; and the credulity, love 
of novelty, and versatility which obtain among 
mankind. 

Upon every sceptical theory, the early 
triumphs of the gospel are not only unac- 
counted for, but totally unaccountable. Such a 
change was never wrought by mere human 
means. The entire experience of the race, and 
all the great facts of history, combine to shew the 
utter irrationality of supposing that a few obscure 
fishermen and mechanics could have baffled all 
the wisdom of the wise, brought to nothing the 
counsel of the prudent, and levelled in the dust 
the mightiest fabrics of superstition and vice. 

But when we admit the doctrine of a super- 
natural influence, according to the distinct an- 
nouncements of Christianity itself, we are 
reminded of a cause adequate to produce the 
effects witnessed. Then we wonder not that 
the weakest instruments should prevail, that 
disaster should lead to triumph, and that the 
blood of the martyrs should be the seed .of the 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 195 

church. If the mighty power of God was with 
the apostles, no wonder that thousands and tens 
of thousands should become obedient to their 
message. If the quickening energy of the living 
Spirit was seen, on the one hand, in external 
signs and wonders, rendering all gains avers in- 
excusable ; and, on the other, in inward, power- 
ful, and all-subduing movements of the heart and 
conscience, what wonder was it if the congregated 
multitudes of Pentecoste trembled, repented, 
and turned to God ; and if the Pagan world re- 
sponded to the mighty and gracious impulse ? 
By the nature of the facts to be accounted for, 
then, no less than by the actual data of Christi- 
anity, are we driven to the conclusion, that there 
was an interior and hidden but all controlling 
power, which accompanied and rendered effec- 
tual the first propagation of Christianity, which 
has watched over it from age to age, and which 
occasions all its success and all its blessed influ- 
ence in the day in which we live. I conclude 
this branch of evidence in the language of an 
eloquent living author : — " Here is a religious 



196 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

system, denominated Christian, which enters the 
world at a most inauspicious period, supposing it 
to be an imposture. It has not one principle in 
common with the religions which then prevailed. 
It is attempted to be propagated by a few per- 
sons who are signally disqualified for the under- 
taking, and are hated of all nations. It is 
opposed, from the very first, by Jew and Gen- 
tile, and chiefly by those who had most power 
and influence in their hands. Moreover, this 
religion is hostile to human opinion, human pre- 
judice, human interest, human nature ; and 
this is apparent from the admitted nature of 
man and the avowed principles of the gospel, as 
well as from the facts, that when men have been 
induced to adopt the Christian name, they have 
remained at enmity to the Christian faith, and 
that there has been, in every age, a predominant 
disposition to misunderstand and misrepresent, 
to pervert and degrade it. Yet has this religion 
been propagated over the earth with a facility 
altogether unparalleled by any art or science. 
Yet has it found a place for itself in many a 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



197 



mind and country, to which the simplest mathe- 
matical demonstrations are at this moment un- 
solved problems. 

" What is the conclusion ? It is — it must be 
this — that the religion of Christ could not have 
been propagated by any earthly power — that it 
could not have been propagated by any mere ex- 
ternal agency of Providence — that it could have 
been propagated only by a spiritual and super- 
natural influence addressed to the perceptions 
and affections of men, — and therefore that the 
religion of Christ is divine, and its propagation 
through all ages is a distinct, independent, 
and speaking evidence of its divinity/'* 

5. Tlie Evidence derived from a survey of the 
moral and social benefits conferred on mankind by 
Christianity. 

This branch of evidence may be treated, like 
the preceding one, as a question simply of fact. 

* See a Discourse by the Rev. A Reed, on " The Evi- 
dence of Revelation derived from the success of the Gospel," 
in a Volume entitled " Lectures on some of the Principal 
Evidences of Revelation, delivered at the Monthly Meet- 
ings, &c.,"pp. 225, 226. 



198 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

For if it can be shewn that Christianity has 
done more than all other causes combined to 
augment the resources of man's present enjoy- 
ment ; if it can be shewn that it has heightened, 
to an almost inconceivable degree, all the social 
virtues ; if it can be shewn that human nature 
has risen to an unheard-of elevation under its 
benign auspices, it will follow, as by resistless 
consequence, after all the fruitless experiments 
of Greece and Rome, that it owes its origin to 
the Fountain of all wisdom and benevolence. 

It is a fact, then, that " the world by wisdom" 
never reformed itself. For the space of four 
thousand years effort after effort was made, but 
without avail, to reduce mankind to some stand- 
ard of obedience, and to rescue them from the 
dominion of selfishness and crime. This process 
of renovation was attempted in the fairest por- 
tions of the globe, and amidst all the advantages 
of the highest intellectual cultivation. It was 
tried in the heart of Europe and Asia, when 
philosophy and arts had reached their greatest 
eminence, and when the human mind had been 
nurtured in the schools to prodigious greatness. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 19b 

In a thousand forms the task of bettering man's 
moral condition had been tried, but without even 
the shadow of success. Many of the precepts, 
indeed, of the heathen philosophers were good ; 
but the motives urged by them were sometimes 
absurd, often vicious, and always powerless upon 
the great mass of the people. Their own 
standard of morals, in not a few instances, was 
glaringly defective ; and as it respected the com- 
munity at large, the theories of the schools did 
not so much as reach even the outward ear. 

In all their pomp and magnificence, when 
poetry, and painting, and statuary, and arms, 
and empire had reached the very zenith of their 
glory, Greece and Rome were as little purged 
from crime and moral degradation as were the 
savage hoards of the north, who, in wild fury, 
broke in upon the empress of the world's destiny. 
The extreme of refinement, and the extreme of 
moral turpitude, met on the same theatre, and in 
the same actors. A base and monstrous idolatry 
everywhere prevailed, and everywhere associ- 
ated itself with crimes which are reserved in 
Christian countries for the worst of men, and for 



200 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

the most hidden recesses of the basest and most 
degraded of mankind. " It is a shame even to 
speak of those things which were done of them 
in secret." The very temples of the gods w^ere 
the dwelling-places of sin. There virgin inno- 
cence was sacrificed at the shrine of the most 
scandalous lusts ; there human victims were 
immolated upon the blood-stained altars of a 
vile and unmeaning idolatry; and there every 
species of impurity and heartless cruelty received 
the sanction of a priesthood whose hands reeked 
with blood, and whose hearts were steeped in 
impenitence and covetous desire. 

It is a fact, too, that all other nations have 
shewn the same propensities, and have been 
distinguished by the same moral habits as Greece 
and Rome. It might have been supposed, 
indeed, that they would have been much more 
vicious ; and that in proportion as they receded 
from the schools of philosophy, and from the 
sphere of the arts, they would put on a hue of 
polution far deeper and more hideous. This, 
however, is by no means the case. The crimes 
of classic antiquity have never been exceeded 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



201 



in the African hoard, or in the Polynesian wild. 
Idolatry, human sacrifice, polygamy, female 
degradation, have everywhere abounded in 
heathen lands ; while there stands not upon the 
record of this world's history one solitary instance 
of a nation rising, by its own energy, from the 
worship of false gods, or from the moral debase- 
ment and crimes which it uniformly involves. 

It is a fact, too, that Christianity did operate, 
and still continues to operate, a wondrous 
change upon the state of society. This change 
it produced, at first, by means the most unlikely. 
By preaching salvation through the cross of Christ, 
the first heralds of Messiah's kingdom, though 
individuals comparatively obscure, brought about 
a revolution of public opinion and of outward 
manners such as had never been the result of any 
preceding attempt to enlighten and to purify 
mankind. In all the heathen provinces of the 
Roman empire, and in the very capital . itself, 
idolatry was everywhere laid aside or proscribed. 
The oracles of paganism were silenced by the 
living oracles of God ; and the horrid practices 
of the temples and the groves were exchanged for 



202 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

the decent solemnities of Christian worship, and 
for the sober and virtuous habits of Christian 
citizens. At Athens, and Corinth, and Ephesus, 
and, indeed, all the chief cities of heathen anti- 
quity, the doctrine of Christ was the instrument 
of changing and remodelling the whole frame- 
work of society. Wherever it reached, it melio- 
rated human life ; and wherever it was actually 
embraced, it ennobled and purified individual 
character. The limits of Christianity have been, 
from its first propagation to the present moment, 
the boundary wall beyond which idolatry has not 
dared, in its direct forms, to pass. It has raised 
the standard of public morals above the most 
favoured models of pagan antiquity, not except- 
ing those even of the far-famed kingdoms of 
Sparta and Syracuse. Where Christianity has 
waved her triumphant banner, she has given 
birth to a state of things altogether new. The 
worship of dumb idols* in every palpable shape, 

* The idolatry of the Church of Rome, though prac- 
tised under the Christian name, is of common origin with 
that of the Pantheon, and can be no less hateful in the 
sight of God. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



203 



she has utterly abolished ; the cruel and bloody 
rites which were practised for ages and genera- 
tions under the auspices of the gods of heathen- 
ism, have been laid aside at her enlightened and 
benevolent call ; the shameless, and even mur- 
derous, sports of the Colisseum she has frowned 
into total annihilation ; the destruction of slaves 
and of female children finds no sanction where 
her voice of mercy is distinctly heard ; the de- 
preciation of the rights which belong to woman 
is no where countenanced beneath the mild 
sway of the gospel ; the abominations of poly- 
gamy and capricious divorce are but little felt in 
any Christian state ; the vassalage of domestic 
slavery has ceased to foster tyranny on the one 
hand, and ignoble baseness on the other ;* the 

* In ancient Attica there were 450,000 inhabitants, out 
of which population, only 40,000 are said to have been free. 
It is a dreadful blot upon the character of this country, 
that still she permits eight hundred thousand British subjects 
to be bought and sold, in the Colonies, at the will of their 
masters. Christians should combine, as such, and seek the 
immediate removal from the land of this crying sin. Alas ! 
that any of the American states should be found, to this day, 
engaged in the slave traffic ! Surely the word liberty must 
freeze upon the tongues of such Americans, and surely Chris- 
tianity itself can be known among them only as a name i 



204 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

direful practice of private assassination,* by the 
dagger or by the poisoned bowl, finds no advo- 
cates in countries upon which the religion of 
Christ has exerted its beneficial tendency ; the 
horrors of war, great as they must ever be, are 
mitigated in a tenfold degree under the generous 
dictation of the gospel ; the poor, the aged, and 
the afflicted are treated with a degree of consi- 
deration in Christian countries altogether un- 
known in pagan lands ; and all the rights of 
property and of personal safety are guaranteed, 
with a degree of precision, in nations blessed 
with the light of revealed truth, to which Rome, 
in all the glory of empire, never attained. 

All this is matter of fact, which no one who 
wishes his understanding to be respected will 
venture for a moment to deny. So palpably, 
indeed, is it such, that the traveller, blind-folded, 

* It was no uncommon thing for a Roman Prator to 
convict, in one short season, in Italy, three or four thousand 
individuals for the crime of private assassination; and 
among these, husbands were often condemned for the secret 
murder of their wives in order to obtain their dowry ; and 
wives for the murder of their husbands in order to secure 
a union to the miscreants who had seduced them from the 
paths of virtue. 



OF CHRISTIANITY, 



205 



may be able to tell when he passes from Christian 
territories into pagan lands. The heathen world 
was one vast theatre of crime, relieved, indeed, 
by here and there some heroic example of 
virtuous conduct, but sunk as a whole into the 
abyss of moral putridity and vice. But when 
Christianity arose in the east, like some bright 
and glorious luminary, it dispelled the darkness 
of the pagan world, and, in little more than two 
centuries from the time of its first publication, it 
shivered to atoms the whole system of idol 
worship, reconstructed the entire fabric of 
society, introduced new maxims of government 
and of personal conduct, changed the manners 
and habits of mankind, drove vice from its 
ancient lurking places, shut the temples of the 
gods, abolished the sacrifices of an idolatrous 
priesthood, and made the hopes and fears of 
immortality the governing principles of thou- 
sands and tens of thousands of the human 
race. 

Whence, then, sprung the power of a triumph 
so great, so speedy, and so benignant ? — a 
triumph which proclaimed peace on earth,, and 
T 



206 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

good will to men,— a triumph bloodless and 
serene, — a triumph which delivered such a large 
portion of the human race from the vassalage 
of the most cruel and abominable idolatries,' — 
a triumph which issued in a melioration in all 
the social relations of man which the wisdom of 
this world could never produce? Whence, I 
ask, sprang the power of such a triumph ? Xot 
from man assuredly ; for it was unlike all the 
other manifestations of his mental character ; 
and it was followed by such benign and holy 
results that it stood solitary and alone upon the 
page of this world's history. Nor was there any 
thing whatever in its origin to indicate the 
wisdom of man. Had man constructed a scheme 
of moral renovation it would have been intro- 
duced to the notice of his fellow-creatures in a 
way very different from that in which Christianity 
began its auspicious career. Let two considera- 
tions then fully possess the mind, and it will be 
impossible to resist the conclusion, that Chris- 
tianity is from heaven. In the first place, re- 
collect that of all agencies that could be con- 
templated, the first heralds of the cross were the 



OP CHRISTIANITY. 



207 



least likely to succeed in the proposed undertak- 
ing of converting the world ; and, in the second 
place, bear in mind, as a matter of fact, that in 
spite of prejudice, in spite of a huge system of 
idolatry, in spite of all interest and power and 
terror, they did succeed in such manner as never 
before had been known ; and in doing so, changed 
the whole face of society, purified all the springs 
of human action, established the reign of peace 
and happiness, drove idolatry from the high 
places of the earth, and, to the full extent of their 
triumph, paved the way for the realization of 
another paradise. 

The power which scattered so much darkness, 
and which spread so much light ; which wrought 
a change on mankind so pure and beneficial ; 
which diffused such a mass of happiness, and 
checked such a mighty current of misery ; which, 
like an electric shock, blasted and withered all 
the ancient fabrics of idolatry, and on their ruins 
erected a system of doctrine and a form of 
worship which promised and yielded peace and 
joy and happiness to all the dwellers upon 
earth, — such a power as this could only have 



208 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

emanated from that throne from which issued 
originally the high behests of creation. 

And, O ! if a triumph which can yet only be 
regarded as partial affords such intimation of the 
benevolent interposition of the Infinite Mind, 
what an evidence of the divine origin of Chris- 
tianity will be supplied to mankind when its 
moral transformations are complete, when all 
nations are subjected to its righteous sway, when 
its disciples shall drink more deeply into its pure 
and benignant spirit, when that blessed influence 
which is now partial shall be universal, and 
when the church of the living God, vocal with 
his praise, shall reflect with sweetest lustre the 
radiance of his moral image. 

Great as were the first triumphs of the gospel, 
there can be no doubt but that greater triumphs 
yet await its peaceful heralds. In the morning 
of its strength it subdued the Roman empire, and 
stood confessed the prevailing religion of the 
civilized world ; but the time is fast approaching 
when it shall be proclaimed the religion of the 
whole earth, and when the mighty changes it 
shall work in the opinions, manners, and hopes 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



209 



of mankind, shall compel the most thoughtless 
of a rebellious race to exclaim — " this is the 
finger of God!" Then when "the people shall 
be all righteous/' and when the Spirit of God 
shall be " poured out upon all flesh/ 7 shall it be 
seen that Christianity is the balm of bleeding 
hearts, the parent of peace and good will, and 
the angel of God's mercy to heal all the miseries 
and vices of an apostate race. 



T 



210 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



CHAPTER IV. 

ON THE TRANSMISSION OF THE SACRED BOOKS. 

Though Christianity be a divine religion, it may 
be possible, in the lapse of ages, that the record 
which discloses its leading doctrines and facts 
has undergone some serious mutilation. Is this 
or is it not the case ? This is an important 
inquiry, and it admits of an easy and satisfactory 
reply — a reply which must cany conviction to 
every candid mind as to the genuineness, authen- 
ticity, and incorrnptness of the Sacred Books. 

That they were written by the men whose 
names they bear is a thing quite as well esta- 
blished as that the iEneid was composed by 
Virgil, the Iliad by Homer, and the Cyropaedia 
by Xenophon. The very literary character of 
the Old and New Testament Scriptures would 
go far to prove that they are genuine productions. 
They exhibit a diversity of style, which shews 
that they were written by various authors, and 
they display an idiomatic peculiarity correspond- 



OF CHRISTIANITY". 



211 



ing to the ages and circumstances in which they 
were written. Thus, in the Pentateuch we meet 
with a slight mixture of Egyptian words, as 
might be expected if Moses was the writer; 
while in the books of Ezra, Xehemiah, and 
Esther, there is a considerable infusion of 
Chaldee and Persian, connecting them beyond 
all reasonable doubt with a period in Jewish 
history subsequent to the Babylonish captivity. 
If, moreover, we turn to the New Testament, 
we find its several parts written in a species of 
Greek partaking largely of Hebrew, Chaldee, 
Syriac, and Latin words and phrases, — a circum- 
stance exactly answering to all that might have 
been anticipated upon the supposition that men 
in the precise condition of the Evangelists and 
Apostles had furnished their contents. 

Nor is it within the range of probability to 
imagine for a moment that the sacred books are 
forgeries. If they are, then they must have 
been palmed upon the world by persons whose 
imposture could not be detected. But how could 
this occur in the matter of giving currency to the 
records of a public faith ? Take, for instance, 



212 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

the Books of the Old Testament Scriptures. If 
they are not genuine production s, I ask who 
were the parties concerned in the iniquitous 
forgery ? It could not be the men of heathen 
antiquity, for they were imperfectly acquainted 
with the national peculiarities and rites of the 
Hebrews ; and were not likely, moreover, to 
stamp the seal of their approbation upon records 
which accredited the posterity of Abraham as 
God's peculiar people, and condemned the whole 
Gentile world as sunk in a state of idolatry and 
crime. It could not be the followers of Christ, 
for it is matter of undoubted historical certainty 
that the Scriptures of the Jews existed many 
centuries before the Christian name was ever 
heard of. It could not be the Jews themselves, 
for never was there a more uncompromising 
exposure of the crimes, idolatries, and righteous 
chastisements of a rebellious and guilty nation 
than that which they contain. 

If we look at the Xew Testament, it is equally 
unreasonable to suppose that it is not a genuine 
production, and that it was not actually written 
by the men to whom it is attributed. Unbe- 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 213 

lieving Jews and Gentiles were happily, in this 
instance, the guardians of revelation ; for as they 
were equally opposed to the doctrine of Him 
whom they had combined to crucify, and as 
they were both zealous in persecuting all who 
ranked themselves as Ins humble and devoted 
followers, it stands to reason, that if the records 
of the Christian faith had not been genuine nar- 
ratives of facts, furnished by the very men who 
assume to be the writers, the dishonest effort 
would have been detected and exposed, and the 
whole world, and all succeeding generations, 
would have been warned against the iniquitous 
attempt to originate a history not founded in 
fact. 

The genuineness of the Books of Scripture 
was never called in question by friends or ene- 
mies. From the earliest periods of the Jewish 
history downwards, the Hebrews regarded their 
sacred Books as their peculiar treasure, and as- 
sociated them all with their several authors and 
ages; and, in like manner, the Christians, from 
the apostolic age to the present moment, have 
had a regular succession of writers, who have 



214 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

quoted and authenticated, in various ways, the 
Books which compose the New Testament 
canon. It is an interesting fact that Celsus, 
and Porphyry, and Julian, and an endless race 
of heretics, combine with the apostolic and Chris- 
tian fathers, Barnabas, Clement, Ignatius, Poly- 
carp, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Origen, and 
Eusebius, in accrediting the Books of Scripture 
as genuine productions. The most inveterate 
opponents of revelation have been compelled to 
admit the fact that the Bible is no forgery. 

Nor is there the slightest reason to suspect 
that the Scriptures have undergone any material 
alteration, or that they are not now in the same 
condition in which they were when they came 
from Moses and the prophets, the evangelists 
and apostles. To say that the original Hebrew 
and Greek manuscripts of the Bible, or that the 
ancient versions and translations, had not been 
deviated from in a single particular, would be to 
assume a position too lofty. In the process of 
transcribing some thousands of copies, before the 
art of printing was discovered, letters and syl- 
lables, and even words, without the intervention 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



215 



of a miracle, must have been left out. But that 
there has been any serious or fraudulent omis- 
sion or interpolation, or that any one doctrine 
has been added or subtracted, cannot be shewn 
by any enemy of revelation, and need not be 
apprehended by any humble -minded or unlet- 
tered Christian. 

As it respects the Old Testament Scriptures, 
it is a well-established fact that the Jews were 
their faithful guardians. They were often em- 
ployed, indeed, in the act of transcribing them, 
but so strict were they in comparing the copies 
with the originals, that they numbered both the 
words and letters. That the Jews never altered 
their Sacred Books is triumphantly proved by 
the fact that neither their own prophets nor Jesus 
Christ, though they laid many a heavy charge at 
their door, ever once intimated that they were 
guilty of such mutilation. The Great Teacher, 
indeed, told them, with the utmost fidelity, that 
they had made void " The commandment of 
God by their traditions/'* but he never insinuates 

* Matt. xy. 6. 



216 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

that they had corrupted the Sacred Books. " It 
is one of the wonders of providence, that God, 
for the preservation of these books, should make 
use of that scrupulous, and I might say, almost 
superstitious, care that was among those Jews 
whose office it was to keep the Books of the 
Old Testament/''* Among the one thousand one 

* See John How's Lectures on the oracles of God. 
Works, one Vol. Imperial Octavo, just published, p. 1075. 
The whole passage referred to is as follows : " It was 
known they used to count all the letters of the Old Testa- 
ment, that they might be sure never to miss a letter. 
Again, in transcribing copies, (which was frequent,) every 
copy was always examined by an appointed number of 
their wise men, as they termed them. Further, if any 
copy should have been found, upon examination, to have 
four or five faults in it, in one copy of the whole Old Testa- 
ment, that book was presently adjudged to be buried in the 
grave of one or other of their wise men. And, lastly, for 
those books that, upon examination, were found to be 
punctually true, it was very plain from the history of those 
times, that there was the greatest reverence paid to them 
imaginable. They never used to touch those perfect 
copies (taking them into their hands) without kissing them 
solemnly, nor to lay them down again without solemn 
kissing of them. They were never used to sit upon the 
place where one of those books was wont to be laid. If 
one of them by casualty fell to the ground, they appointed 
a solemn fast to be kept for it, as an ill-boding thing, that 
such a thing should happen. So that it is most plain that 
these keepers of the Books of the Old Testament could 
never have it in design to corrupt any of them ; but it was 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



217 



hundred and fifty manuscripts and versions of 
the Old Testament which are still extant, there 
is an essential agreement, an agreement most 
wonderful and striking, shewing, beyond all 

that which they did abhor above all things. And it was a 
principle (as Philo tells us, and Josephus much to the same 
purpose) instilled into the youth of that nation, and even 
those of the best quality, that they should run the utmost 
hazard, and incur a thousand deaths, rather than they should 
suffer any alteration or diminution of those books, or that 
any of them should be lost in any other way. And then, 
besides all this scrupulous care of the keepers of the books 
of the Old Testament (with which a design of corrupting 
would no way consist), we may add, that the thing itself 
was afterward impossible. If they would before, when it 
was in their own hands, they could ; but afterwards, if they 
would, they could not ; because that in Christ and his 
apostles' days, a great number of them were converted to 
the Christian faith, who knew all the Books of the Old 
Testament as well as themselves. Therefore, it was impos- 
sible now for the infidel Jews, those that were not con- 
verted, to make any alteration but it must be presently 
spied and exclaimed against ; therefore it was a vain thing 
for any to attempt it, after so many were converted to the 
Christian religion. And thereupon we may further add, 
that the testimonies that were contained in these books 
against themselves, and with which contained in them they 
are transmitted to us, do shew that they never went about 
to corrupt them. The many testimonies against idolatry 
contained in these books, whereby their forefathers from age 
to age, for many ages, were witnessed against, would have 
induced them to expunge all things that were therein con- 
tained against idolatry (so tender were they of their repu- 

II U 
I 



218 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



conjecture or doubt, the uncorrupted preserva- 
tion of these precious records. 

Xor is the protection less manifest which has 
been spread over the books of the New Testament. 

tation), if there had not been a great awe upon their minds 
never to attempt the corrupting or the alteration of any 
thing in those books. The wickedness of their forefathers 
was, in these books, so highly remonstrated against, in re- 
spect of the testimonies they so often gave against their 
idolatry, and yet these books we find in their own hands, 
with these testimonies in them, against the Jews and their 
forefathers, for many foregoing ages, through sundry times 
and divers intervals, though we do not find after the second 
temple that people relapsed into that crime. And then 
there is the fullest testimony against their infidelity in these 
books that can be. "Who would not wonder that these 
books should come out of the hands of the Jews, with these 
testimonies, in the great controversy between the Chris- 
tians and them ? that is, of Christ being the Messiah, in 
which you have so punctual assertions against them that 
nothing can be more. Those many testimonies that do 
concern the Messiah, particularly that famous prophecy, 
that the sceptre should not depart from Judah till Shilo 
should come, and those numerous presages in many of the 
latter prophets, (Isaiah especially, and sundry others,) 
make it one of the greatest wonders of Providence that 
such a book should come, with these things in it, out of 
men's hands, against whom they are a continual remon- 
strance. But, however, this proves that they did never 
design any alteration ; either they saw it impossible for one 
while, and before that, they had no inclination or induce- 
ment that would be prevailing with them to go about it, 
that is, that there should be an alteration with design." 



OF CHRTSTIANITY. 219 

The early multiplication of copies, together with 
the several translations into foreign tongues, ren- 
dered any serious deviation from the orginal manu- 
scripts utterly impossible. Besides, in the course of 
one century from the period of Christ's resurrec- 
tion, the gospel was spread over the greater part 
of the Lesser iVsia, and over many portions of 
Africa and Europe ; so that if any of the early 
Christians, in any particular district of the world, 
had attempted to alter or mutilate the sacred 
books, it would have been impossible that they 
should have escaped detection among the many 
disciples of Christ spread over other sections of 
the globe. 

The early heresies, too, which sprung up 
among the professed followers of Jesus, rendered 
the corruption of the sacred books next to an 
impossibility. "That passage of the apostle/' 
observes the immortal Howe, "is not greatly 
enough pondered according to the weightiness 
of the expression, that there must be heresies. 
This great use that hath been of the divisions in 
Christian churches is not, it may be, considered 
as it should be by many. But nothing can carry 



220 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

a clearer evidence and demonstration with it 
than that, because of those divisions, any depra- 
vation of the said records (that is, any material, 
general, successful, continued depravation) is 
altogether impossible ; because the one party 
would be continually declaiming and crying out 
against the other ; and then how would it be 
espied ?"* 

Indeed it may be safely affirmed, that the 
Christians were never charged by their bitterest 
enemies with the crime of mutilating their Scrip- 
tures, and that these sacred records have suffered 
less from transcribers, copyists, and translators, 
than any other documents of a remote antiquity. 

"It is true, that in translations, persons have 
laboured to serve then- own purposes, by trans- 
lating this way and that, as they thought fit. 
But for alteration of copies, that is what never 
entered into the mind of any body to attempt ; 
which is a thing so easily spied out, that nothing 
is more so ; and so must needs blast and dissever 
the cause and interest of that party it was de- 



* Howe's Work, in one voL^ p. 1076. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 221 

signed to serve, and therefore could never be. 
And the impossibility of any such alteration it 
is easy for any man that useth his understanding 
to apprehend from a similar instance. And 
thus, do but take any one people that are under 
the same government, and that have their laws, 
by which they are governed, digested into some 
system or other; as, for instance, our statute 
book ; why, suppose very ill-minded men in the 
nation should have a design to corrupt and alter 
the statute book, every one would see it to 
be impossible. Which way would they go to 
work to impose a false statute book upon a nation, 
wherein every man's right and property is con- 
cerned ? And if any such should have such a 
design, they would soon give it up, as finding it 
impossible, and a thing not to be done, and 
therefore a vain thing to attempt. But the 
difficulty is a thousand times greater of making 
designed alteration of those sacred books and 
records that are spread so unspeakably further 
than a nation, and wherein the concernments 
of all that have them in their hands are recorded, 
not temporal only, but eternal. Here is their all 



222 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

for eternity, another world ! So that it must be 
altogether impossible that there could have been 
such a thing effected ; and therefore it is the 
most unlikely thing that such a matter should 
ever be attempted. And then, I say, if there 
be that plain evidence, that for that reason these 
books must be the same, that they cannot have 
been altered with design, and consequently not 
materially, then it were the most unreasonable 
thing in all the world to expect that God could 
confirm it to us otherwise than he hath done, or 
that the nature of the thing doth admit of it ; 
because, otherwise, there must have been miracles 
wrought for every one to see and take notice of, 
nay, that would altogether loose the usefulness, 
and signiricancy of miracles themselves, because 
it would make miracles so common in such a 
case. If every man must have a miracle to 
prove to him this is God's word, it would take 
off that particular thing for which they are 
only significant with men, that is, because they 
are rare and extraordinary tilings, and then 
they would cease to be so. It might as well be 
expected that every man should have a Bible 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



223 



reached him down by an invisible hand from 
heaven, as that there should be a miracle wrought 
to prove to him that this was the same book 
that was so and so confirmed and sealed in our 
Saviour's and his apostles' time. And therefore 
I reckon that, upon the grounds that have been 
laid, it is very plain both that these books that 
were extant under the name of Scriptures in our 
Saviour's and his apostles' time, were of divine 
authority, and that the books that we now have 
in our hands are the same with those books, 
and therefore are of divine authority."* 

It is, then, a most animating consideration, that, 
by a variety of striking providences, it hath pleased 
Almighty God to preserve to us unmutilated and 
uncorrupted the very records which the first 
Christians held to be divine, and upon the doc- 
trines and principles of which they were ready, 
in the midst of the greatest dangers, to repose 
their eternal all. It is highly consolatory to those 
who have but little time and few advantages for 
research to be informed, upon the most indubi- 



* Howe's AVurk ; p. 1076. 



224 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

table evidence, that in their English Bibles they 
have the same precious document which was 
read in the first assemblies of the Christian 
church ; and that, in the multiplication of manu- 
scripts and translations, no serious or important 
alteration has been obtruded into the sacred 
text. For this fact let the humble and devout 
Christian bless God ; and, in the contemplation of 
it, let the rejecter of Revelation pause and tremble, 
lest peradventure he should be found fighting 
against God. 

Let this chapter be fairly weighed in connexion 
with what has been previously advanced on the 
subject of the evidences of our holy faith, and let 
him who still doubts say within himself — "Where- 
fore do I doubt ? 7 ' To such a solemn interrogatory, 
conscience may perhaps supply the ready and 
faithful response, — "How can you but doubt, 
while sin is blinding your perceptions, and 
hardening your heart ? ' ' 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



225 



CHAPTER V. 

ON THE INSPIRATION OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 

Having glanced at the evidence which supports 
the conclusion that the Bible is a Revelation 
from God, and having, moreover, ascertained 
that the books of Scripture have been trans- 
mitted to us in a pure and unadulterated form, 
it may now be proper to inquire into the true 
nature of inspiration, and to endeavour to deter- 
mine to what extent the sacred volume is 
entitled to the high and distinctive appellation 

Of — " THE WORD OF GOD." 

The importance of this question is very great, 
for upon its answer must depend the degree of 
deference which is due to the Scriptures as an 
authoritative communication from Heaven. It 
is a question which cannot be decided, I . pre- 
sume, by any arguments d priori, but by a direct 
appeal to the testimony of the infallible word. 
The real nature of inspiration, as belonging to 
the writers of Scripture, is a doctrine purely of 



226 



THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



Revelation ; and the only duty of a sincere in- 
quirer in reference to it must be simply this, to 
ascertain for himself what is predicated or an- 
nounced concerning it in the word of God. 

With this conviction on my mind, I shall not 
trouble my readers with any lengthened details 
of what others have advanced on the subject of 
inspiration, but shall come almost immediately 
to the point in hand, viz., the doctrine of Scrip- 
ture, as to the manner in which it teas imparted. 

I must just be allowed, however, to premise, 
that writers of the Socinian creed have so 
relaxed their notions of inspiration as to talk 
even of the inconclusive reasonings of apostles ; 
and that others, not of this pernicious creed, 
have spoken and written about degrees and kinds 
of inspiration until they have inadvertently 
weakened, on their own minds, and on the minds 
of others, the authority of God in the Scriptures. 
I would have all such writers remember, that 
these modified views of inspiration are of modern 
date, and that for full sixteen hundred years 
they were unknown in the church of Christ. 
" Many considerable writers on the evidences 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 227 

of Christianity, of late, have satisfied themselves 
with proving its divine authority generally, but 
have tacitly, and most inconsistently, given up 
or denied the infallibility of the books in which 
it is recorded. They speak of authenticity, 
veracity, credibility; but not inspiration. Some 
have limited the assistance of the Spirit to the 
prophetical parts. Others have extended it to 
the doctrinal, but excluded the historical. Whilst 
many have lowered the whole notion of inspi- 
ration to a mere aid occasionally afforded to the 
sacred penmen. Thus the impression left on 
the minds of their readers has been, that the 
Bible is authentic indeed, and credible, and con- 
tains a revelation from God; but that it was 
indited by good and pious men only, with 
little more of accuracy than would belong to 
them as faithful historians. An intermixture of 
human infirmity and error is thus by no means 
excluded ; and the Scriptures are considered as 
the work of fallible writers, doing their best, and 
entitled in all their mam statements to full belief, 
but not under that immediate and plenary in- 
fluence of the Holy Spirit, which renders all 



228 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

they say concerning religion, the unerring word 
of God."* 

Most ruinous to the souls of men must be such 
views of the blessed word of God, and most 
derogatory are they to that Spirit, who has not 
given so much as a shadow of countenance, in 
the sacred books, to such vague and sceptical 
notions. We ought to be jealous, not only of 
such latitudinarian views of inspiration, but also 
of every approach to them. For my own part, 
after much deliberation, and I trust careful and 
unprejudiced examination of the arguments of 
opponents, I have come to the conclusion, not 
only that the ideas contained in scripture were 
conveyed by the Spirit to the minds of inspired 
men, but that they were supernaturally guided 
in their diction and in their writings. I shall 
not, however, bring this theory to the word of 
God, to seek countenance for it there ; but shall 
rather call the attention of my readers to the 
word of God itself, that they may thence gather 
the true notion of inspiration. 

« 

* See Bishop Wilson's Lectures on " The Evidences," 
&c, 12mo ; vol. i, p. 314. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 229 

I begin, then, with that part of scripture 
which was included in the Jewish canon, and 
which is known by the name of the Old Testa- 
ment. And if it can be shewn that the infalli- 
ble Teacher, whose divine mission has already 
been clearly established, fully accredits the 
divine authority, and the infallible character of 
that document, considered as a whole, and 
without a single recognised exception, an im- 
portant step will have been gained towards 
ascertaining the perfection of the Jewish canon, 
and also the real nature and extent of inspiration . 

At an early stage in his public ministry the 
Messiah announced, to an immense assembly of 
his countrymen, his views and determinations 
respecting their ancient Scriptures — " Think 
not," said he, " that I am come to destroy the 
Law and the Prophets : I am not come to destroy, 
but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, till 
heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall 
in no wise pass from the law, till all be ful- 
filled/''* Every attentive reader of the New 

* Matt. v. 17, 18. 
X 



230 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

Testament must have discovered that the phrase 
" the law and the prophets" denotes the sacred 
books of the Jews; and every unprejudiced 
reader must perceive that the Saviour in this 
declaration recognises them as an infallible 
standard, by which he was willing that his own 
pretensions should be rigidly tried. 

On another occasion he charges those who 
reject him with not having the word of God 
abiding in them, because they believed not in 
him whom God the Father had sent to them ; 
and then he immediately adds — " Search the 
Scriptures ; for in them ye have eternal life : 
and they are they which testify of me." "Do 
not think that I will accuse you to the Father : 
there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in 
whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye 
would have believed me : for he wrote of me"* 
Here are several things to be noticed. In the 
first place, the Scriptures of the Jews, which did 
not abide in them through their unbelief, are dis- 
tinctly recognised as the word of God. In the 



* John y. 38, $9, 45, 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 231 

second place, they are appealed to as a testi- 
mony from God concerning Christ, rendering all 
those Jews inexcusable who rejected him. And, 
in the third place, they are spoken of empha- 
tically as the writings, evidently including them 
all, and leaving no room to dispute the divine 
origin of their diction any more than the doc- 
trines they contained. 

On many occasions, Jesus spake of the sacred 
books of the Jews as divinely authoritative 
writings. "He that believeth on me, as the 
Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow 
rivers of living water/"* "If he called them 
gods, unto whom the word of God came, and 
the Scripture cannot be broken ; say ye of him 
whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into 
the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, 
I am the Son of GocU'f "Jesus saith unto 
them, did ye never read in the Scriptures, the 
stone which the builders rejected, the same is 
become the head of the corner : this is the 



* John vii. 38. 



t John x. 35, 36, 



232 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes ?"* 
" Jesus answered and said unto them, ye do err, 
not knowing the Scriptures"^ " Thinkest thou 
that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he 
shall presently give me more than twelve legions 
of angels ? But how then shall the Scrip- 
tures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?":j: "I 
was daily with you in the temple teaching, and 
ye took me not : but the Scripture must be ful- 
filled.'^ Now what are we to gather from this 
species of reference ? Why, two things— -first, 
that there is not the shadow of a doubt upon the 
inspiration of any part of a document to which 
the infallible Teacher made such implicit and au- 
thoritative allusion; and, second, that simply con- 
sidered as writings^ the books thus referred to 
are the product of God's immediate inspiration. 
Where is there any thing like a surmise that 
there is not as much authority in the writings as 
in the thoughts and ideas which they convey? 



* Matt. xxi. 42. 

t -Matt. xxvi. 53, 54. 



t Matt. xxii. 29. 
§ Mark xiv. 49. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 233 

To the testimony of our Lord may be added 
that of his Apostles, who bore his commission, 
and who wrought stupendous miracles in his 
name. " All Scripture/' said Paul to Timothy, 
" is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable 
for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for 
instruction in righteousness, &c. 5? * Now, grant- 
ing that the rendering of Grotius, " all divinely 
inspired Scripture is even profitable, Sfc." is the 
correct one, it is perfectly clear that the context 
mainly, if not exclusively, restricts the Apostle's 
declaration to the Old Testament Scriptures, — 
those sacred writings which Timothy had known 
from his infancy. The whole Scripture, in the 
knowledge of which this young evangelist had 
been trained, is here said to be given by inspira- 
tion of God ; that is, breathed by him into the 
minds of those holy men who were divinely and 
infallibly gifted to hand it forth to the church. 

The Apostle Peter, when speaking of the office 
and end of prophecy, as "a light that shineth in 
a dark place," asserts, that "no prophecy of the 



* 2 Tim. iii. 16. 



234 



THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



Scripture is of any private interpretation. For 
the prophecy came not in old time by the will 
of man ; but holy men of God spake as they 
were moved by the Holy' Ghost."* I cannot help 
thinking that an unprejudiced expositor would 
regard this as a distinct affirmation of the inspi- 
ration of the prophecies, both as it respects their 
matter and manner. As to their matter, they 
were not the result of any private impulse ;f and 
as to then manner, " holy men spake as they 
were moved by the Holy Ghost. ' ; The pro- 
phets are also represented, by the same Apostle, 
as " searching what, or what manner of time 
the Spirit of Christ, which was in them, did sig- 
nify, when it testified before-hand the sufferings 

* 2 Pet. i. 20,21. 
t Dr. Doddridge's paraphrase is as follows : — " Knowing 
this first, as a matter of chief importance, that no prophecy 
of Scripture is of private impulse" or original : "For prophecy 
was not brought of old to the minds of those that uttered it by 
the will of man ; they could not work themselves up to the 
attainment of this extraordinary gift, nor divinely foretel 
what they themselves desired, and whenever they pleased ; 
but holy men of God, whom he honoured with that impor- 
tant work, spake ias they were] borne on by the Holy Spirit ; 
and they were only his organs in declaring to the people 
what he was disposed to suggest to them*" 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



235 



of Christ, and the glory that should follow."* 
From this passage it is plain that the prophets 
did not always, nor even frequently, understand 
the import of their own predictions; from which 
it may be inferred, with indubitable certainty, 
that the words in which they were couched, no 
less than the thoughts winch they contained, 
were imparted by the Spirit of God; for surely 
they could not have been trusted with the diction 
and verbiage of a communication which con- 
fessedly they did not understand. 

It is upon this same principle, that we find the 
Old Testament Scriptures styled " the Oracles of 
God, ? 't and "the lively oracles;''* £ to indicate, 
doubtless, that they were given forth by God 
himself. Hence the following expressions — 
" Xow all this was done, that it might be fulfilled 
which was spoken of the Lord, by the prophet. "§ 
"How then doth David, in spirit, call him 
Lord ?"|| " For David himself saith by the Holy 
Ghost " As he spake by the mouth of his 



* IPet. i. 11. 
\ Acts vii. 38. 
| Matt, xxii. 43. 



f Rom. iii. 2. 

§ Matt. i. 22. ii. ]j. 

«f Mark xii. 36. 



236 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



holy prophets, which have been since the world 
began. "* " Which the Holy Ghost spake by 
the mouth of David." f " He saith (that is God) 
also in another Psalm, thou shalt not suffer thine 
Holy One to see corruption/'^ " Well spake 
the Holy Ghost, by Esaias the prophet, unto our 
fathers. "§ Wherefore, as the Holy Ghost saith, 
to-day if you will hear his voice." || 

Now all this corresponds with what we find 
in the Old Testament Scriptures themselves. 
Take the case of Moses, the great prophet and 
lawgiver of Israel, and the inspired author of 
the Pentateuch. When he was commanded to 
go to Pharoah, and to lead forth the people of 
Israel, he entreated that he might be excused 
from the performance of a task for which he 
deemed himself so utterly imqualified. His 
sense of weakness was, in a high degree, proper ; 
but his refusal to go, when God had assured him 
that he would be "with him/' evinced great 
want of faith. God reproved him for his sinful 



* Luke i. 70. t Acts i. 16. 

i Acts xiii. 35. § Acts xxviii. '2d, 

|| Heb. x. 15. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



23? 



timidity, and said to him, " Who hath made 
man's mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or 
deaf, or the seeing, or the blind ? have not I the 
Lord ? Now, therefore, go, and I will he with 
thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shall say."* 
The leader of Israel again repeats his difficulty, 
and again receives a similar reply. At last his 
scruples are overcome by the feeling of super- 
natural aid, and ever after his addresses to the 
chosen tribes are couched in terms indicative of 
their immediate divine origin — " Thus saith the 
Lord," — " These are the words which the Lord 
hath commanded, that ye should do them/ 3 
Had he not been conscious that the inspiration 
under which he wrote extended to his words as 
well as thoughts, would he have adopted the 
phraseology attributed to him in the following 
passages ? — " Ye shall not add unto the word 
which I command you, neither shall ye diminish 
aught from it, that ye may keep these command" 
ments of the Lord your God which I command 
you."f "And these words which I command 



* Exod. iv. 11, 12. 



t Deut. iv. 2. 



23S THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

thee this day shall be in thine heart, and thou 
shalt teach them diligently unto thy children. "* 
" Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in 
your heart and in your soul, and bind them for 
a sign upon your head that they may be as 
frontlets between your eyes. And ye shall teach 
them to your children, speaking of them when 
thou sittest in thine house, and when thou 
walkest by the way, when thou best down, and 
when thou risest up. And thou shalt write them 
upon the door posts of thine house, and upon 
thy gates.' 'f 

In like manner all the prophets represent their 
entire communications as from God ; they all ad- 
dress themselves to the people, " Thus saith 
the Lord/'" and some of them, as in the case of 
Elijah to Ahab, personate the Deity, and utter 
his threatenings as if they were their own ; 
" Behold I will bring evil upon thee, and will take 
away thy posterity this was the voice, in- 
deed, of Elijah, but the speaker was God. Hence 



* Deut. vi. 6. 
t Deut. xi. 18. } 1 Kings, xxi. 21. 



OF CHRISTIANITY, 239 

the word of the Lord is said again and again to 
come to the prophets, and the sweet Psalmist of 
Israel says, " The spirit of the Lord spake by 
me, and his word was in my tongue.' ; * 

It may, indeed, be said that, though in the 
prophetical and doctrinal parts of the Old Testa- 
ment Scriptures the sacred writers were under 
the influence of a full and verbal inspiration, this 
could not be necessary in furnishing the histori- 
cal parts of the word of God. Xow, this is a 
distinction which is never once made, to the best 
of my recollection, in the inspired volume itself ; 
and when the vast importance of the chronologi- 
cal and historical details of Scripture is taken 
into account, in the relations winch they bear 
to the transcendent scheme of human redemp- 
tion, I think it will be regarded as futile and 
dangerous. Upon the whole I am satisfied that 
there is no solid foundation for any theory of 
the inspiration of the Old Testament Scriptures 
which does not consider all their several parts 
as written under the immediate teaching of the 
Holy Ghost, both as to sentiment and diction, 



* 2 Sam. xxiii. 2* 



240 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

Nor is the complete inspiration of the apostles 
and writers of the New Testament less satisfac- 
torily demonstrated than is that of Moses and 
the prophets. Such full inspiration they emi- 
nently needed, in order to the faithful execution 
of their responsible task. They were to be em- 
ployed in raising up disciples to their risen Lord, 
and as the historians of his life and death ; and 
as the authoritative counsellors of his church in 
all ages, they needed " an unction from the Holy 
One. ' ' We find accordingly that such unction and 
such infallible guidance as were necessary were 
distinctly promised to them. Twelve men were 
selected as the heralds of his kingdom, who en- 
joyed his familiar intercourse, and were in every 
way qualified for bearing witness to his doc- 
trine, miracles, sufferings, death, and resurrection. 
" Go ye," said Christ to his chosen band, " and 
teach all nations, baptizing them in the name 
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost ; teaching them to observe all things what- 
soever I have commanded you ; and, lo, I am 
with you alway, even unto the end of the world? * 



* Matt, xviii. 19, 20. 



OF CHRISTIANITY, 



241 



When, during his own personal ministry, he sent 
them forth to visit the cities of Israel, he gave 
them this miraculous assurance, — " But when 
they deliver you up, take no thought how or 
what ye shall speak ; for it shall be given you in 
that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is 
not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father 
which speaketh in you."* And when our 
blessed Lord was about to ascend up on high and 
to leave his apostles and disciples, he delivered to 
them the following animating promises : — " And 
I will pray the Father, and he will give you 
another Comforter, that he may abide with you 
for ever; even the Spirit of Truth, whom the 
world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, 
neither knoweth him. But ye know him, for he 
dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. The 
Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the 
Father will send in my name, he shall teach you 
all things, and bring all things to your remem- 
brance, whatsoever I have said unto you. I 
have yet many things to say unto you, but ye 



* Matt, x.19,20. 
Y 



242 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

cannot hear them now. Howbeit, when He, the 
Spirit of Truth, is come, he will guide you into all 
truth; for he shall not speak of himself, but 
whatsoever he shall hear that shall he speak ; 
and he will shew you things to come." " Here," 
observes .an eminent writer, " are all the degrees 
of inspiration which we have seen to be necessary 
for the apostles ; the Spirit was to bring to their 
remembrance what they had heard; to guide 
them into the truth, which they were not then 
able to bear ; and to shew them things to come ; 
and all this they were to derive, not from occa- 
sional illapses, but from the perpetual inhabita- 
tion of the Spirit."* 

Hence we find that the apostles laid claim to 
that inspiration which their divine Master had 
so distinctly promised. " We shall not find," as 
the above writer well observes, " that claim 
formally advanced in the gospels. This omission 
has sometimes been regarded by those superficial 
critics, whose prejudices seem to account for their 

* See the Rev. Richard Watson's Theological Dictionary, 
under the article (i Inspiration*" 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



243 



haste, as an objection against the existence of in- 
spiration. But if you attend to the reason of 
the omission, you will perceive that it is only an 
instance of that delicate propriety which pervades 
all the New Testament. The gospels are the 
record of the great facts which vouch the truth of 
Christianity. These facts are to be received upon 
the testimony of men who had been eye-witnesses 
of them. The foundation of the Christian faith 
being laid in an assent to these facts, it would 
have been preposterous to have introduced in 
support of them that influence of the Spirit which 
preserved the minds of the apostles from error. 
For there can be no proof of the inspiration of the 
apostles unless the truth of the facts be previously 
admitted. The apostles, therefore, bring forward 
the evidence of Christianity in its natural order 
when they speak in the gospels as the companions 
and eye-witnesses of Jesus, claiming that credit 
which is due to honest men who had the best 
opportunities of knowing what they declared. 
This is the language of St. John — " Many other 
signs did Jesus in the presence of his disciples. 
But these are written that ye may believe; 



244 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

and this is the disciple which testifieth these 
things.'''* 

When the following circumstances, then, are 
taken into account, the absence of any formal 
announcement of inspiration in the gospels is no 
barrier in the way of admitting their full claim to 
this high distinction. In the first place, there was 
an assistance promised by our Lord, ere he left 
his disciples, which, from its very form, must 
have been partly at least intended to qualify his 
disciples for the task of recording the history of 
his earthly sojourn. By that assistance they 
were to have " all things whatsoever the Lord 
said to them brought to their remembrance;'' 
they were to be conducted "into all truth;'' 
they were to be shewn the "things to come;" 
and Christ was to be with them always. 

In the second place, we find that no distinc- 
tion whatever is made, by Christ, between the 
authority of those whom he accredited and his 
own. " He that heareth you, heareth me ; and 



* John xx. 30; 31. xxi. 24. See Watson's Theological 
Dictionary, on the article " Inspiration." 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



245 



he that despiseth you, despiseth me ; and he that 
despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me.''* 
This is language which equally accredits the 
gospels f and the epistles, and winch renders it a 
high affront to the Son of God to cavil at any 
thing contained in the one or the other. 

In the third place, we find the apostles placing 
their own communications on a level with those 
of prophets and inspired men of old. " That ye 
maybe mindful," said the apostle Peter, "of the 
words which were spoken before by the holy 
prophets, and of the commandments of us the 

* Luke x. 16. 
t It may be said, indeed, that Mark and Luke were not 
apostles, and that, therefore, the infallible assistance promised 
to such distinguished servants of the church did not belong 
to them. In reply to this, it ma}* be stated, that early general 
tradition places VTark among those seventy disciples whom 
Christ sent out through the land of Israel with miraculous 
endowments and a promise of supernatural aid ; and awards 
to his gospel a place among the canonical books of the Xew 
Testament ; — and that Luke, who appears to have written his 
gospel first, (though several uninspired accounts of the 
history of Christ obtained before, Luke i. 1,) was the con- 
temporary and intimate companion of Paul, (Col. iv. 14,) 
who, it is universally conceded, examined and approved his 
gospel, stamping it with apostolic authority, and thereby 
ushering it into the church of Christ with the full credentials 
of canonical and inspired scripture. 



246 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

apostles of the Lord and Saviour."* Hence the 
language of the great apostle of the Gentiles : — 
" Paul an apostle of J esus Christ, by the will' ' or 
" commandment of God :"f " Paul, an apostle, 
not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, 
and God the Father, who raised him from the 
dead. I neither received the gospel of man, 
neither was I taught it but by the revelation of 
Jesus Christ. When it pleased God, who 
separated me from my mother's womb, and 
called me by his grace to reveal his Son in me, 
that I might preach him among the heathen, 
immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood, 
neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which 
were apostles before, but I went into Arabia." X 
In the most unequivocal forms that can be 
adopted, the apostles assert their inspiration in 
their epistolary correspondence. " Now," said 
Paul, " we have received not the spirit of the 
world, but the spirit which is of" God ; that we 
might know the things which are freely given us 
of God, which things also we speak, not in the 

* 2 Pet iii. 2. f Eph. i. 1. 1 Tim. i. 1. 

X Gal. i. 1, 12, 15 — 17. compared with Acts xxvi. 12 — 18. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 247 

words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which 
the Holy Ghost teacheth."'* " If any man think 
himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him ac- 
knowledge that the things that I write unto you 
are the commandments of the Lord/'f " For 
this cause, also, thank we God without ceasing, 
because when ye receiyed the word of God which 
ye heard of us, ye receiyed it not a's the word of 
men, but, as it is in truth, the word of God/ 'J 
" We are of God," said the apostle John ; " he 
that knoweth God, heareth us : he that is not of 
God, heareth not us."§ And, speaking of the 
Xew Testament Church, Paul declares that it is 
" built upon the foundation of the apostles and 
prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief corner 
stone." || Such a form of expression must have 
been blasphemous in the extreme, if the writings 
and the authority of the apostles did not stand 
upon an equal footing with the writings and the 
authority of the prophets. In all the passages 
which demonstrate the inspiration of the word of 

* 1 Cor. ii. 12, 13. t 1 Cor. xiv. 37. 

t 1 Thess- ii. 13. § 1 John iv. 6. 

|| Eph. ii. 20. 



248 THE TKUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



God, there is not one, as far as I remember, that 
limits the divine afflatus to the sentiments con- 
veyed ; and, on the other hand, there are several 
texts which extend it, beyond all reasonable doubt, 
to the words which the speakers employ :* the 
conclusion I draw from this is, that the distinction 
between mental and verbal inspiration is altogether 
of man's devising, and that the only safe way of 
receiving the entire Scriptures is to regard both 
their sentiment and their language as " the 
word of God." 

There may be difficulties to some minds in 
this view. But what view of truth is without 
difficulty? If we believe nothing till we get 
rid of all difficulty, we shall verily soon be in 
the condition of believing nothing. 

Some have said, if inspiration be plenary and 
verbal, how can the difference of style among the 

* Take all those parts of the Prophets and of the Penta- 
teuch which begin with — " Thus saith the Lord;" and also 
such parts of the prophetic announcements as were unin- 
telligible to the prophets themselves. Dan. xii. 7 — 9. In 
the New Testament, see also John xiv. 16, 17, 26. xvi. 12, 
13. Luke xxi. 15. Matt. x. 19, 20. 1 Cor. ii. 13. 2 Pet, 
i. 21. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 249 

several writers of Scripture be accounted for 0 
My reply is, that the Spirit of God was as 
capable of influencing the mind of a prophet or 
an apostle in coincidence with his own tastes, 
predilections, and education, as in opposition to 
them. If the inspiration is admitted at all, there 
need, therefore, be no doubt or perplexity here. 
I may just add, however, that though there is a 
striking variety in the diction of the inspired 
writers, there is, at the same time, an inex- 
pressible peculiarity attaching to the books 
Scripture at large, which distinguishes them from 
all apocryphal and uninspired productions in the 
several ages to which they belong. The indivi- 
duality of the writers is indeed preserved ; but 
the individuality of the divine agency is not less 
conspicuous. " Is it not evident,'" observes an 
eminent divine, " that God may exercise a per- 
fect superintendency over inspired writers as 
to the language they shall use, and yet that each 
one of them shall write in his own style, and in 
all respects according to his own taste ? May 
not God give such aid to his servants, that, while 
using their own style, they will certainly be 



250 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

secured against all mistakes, and exhibit the 
truth with perfect propriety ? It is unquestion- 
able that Isaiah, and St. Paul, and St. John 
might be under the entire direction of the Holy 
Spirit, even as to language ; and, at the same 
time, that each one of them might write in his 
own manner ; and that the peculiar manner of 
each might be adapted to answer an important 
end; and that the variety of style thus intro- 
duced into the sacred volume might be suited to 
excite a livelier interest in the minds of men, and 
to secure to them a far greater amount of good 
than could ever have been derived from any one 
mode of writing. 

"If we should admit that the divine super- 
intendence and guidance afforded to the inspired 
writers had had no relation at all to the manner 
ixi which they exhibited either doctrines or facts, 
how easily might we be disturbed with doubts in 
regard to the propriety of some of their repre- 
sentations ? We should most certainly consider 
them as liable to all the inadvertencies and mis- 
takes to which uninspired men are commonly 
liable ; and we should think ourselves perfectly 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 2ol 

justified in undertaking to charge them with real 
errors and faults as to style, and to shew how r 
their language might have been improved ; and, 
in short, to treat their writings just as we treat 
the writings of Shakspeare and Addison. 6 Here/ 
we might say, c Paul was unfortunate in the 
choice of words ; and here his language does not 
express the ideas which he must have intended 
to convey/ 6 Here the style of St. John was 
inadvertent ; and here it was faulty ; and here it 
w r ould have been more agreeable to the nature of 
the subject, and w r ould have more accurately 
expressed the truth, had it been altered thus.' 
If the language of the sacred writers did not in 
any way come under the inspiration of the Holy 
Spirit, and if they were left, just as other writers 
are, to their own unaided faculties in regard to 
every thing which pertained to the manner of 
writing, then, evidently, we might use the same 
freedom in animadverting upon their style as 
upon the style of other waiters. But who could 
treat the volume of inspiration in this manner 
without impiety and profaneness ? And rather 
than make any approach to this, who would not 



252 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

choose to go to an excess, if there could be an 
excess, in reverence for the word of God."* 

To these excellent remarks I would add, that 
he who objects to the doctrine of verbal inspira- 
tion on account of the variety of style which 
obtains among the sacred writers, might, on the 
same principle, object to mental inspiration on 
account of the variety of thought by which they 
are equally distinguished. 

It is in receiving " all Scripture as given by in- 
spiration of God" that the mind finds repose from 
those endless suspicions which must assail those 
who regard the Bible as the word of God as to 
doctrine, but the word of man as to the channel 
of conveyance. 



* Dr. Woods, on Inspiration. 



OF CHRISTIANITY* 



253 



CHAPTER VI. 

SOME POPULAR OBJECTIONS TO THE FULL INSPIRA- 
TION OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES.* 

1. It has been objected, that if the inspiration 
of the Scriptures be plenary and verbal, it will 
then follow, that the improper and wicked say- 
ings of bad men, and even devils, which are 
introduced in Scripture, must lay claim to an 
immediate inspiration. — The answer to this very 
flimsy difficulty is simply this, — that though, 
in such cases, the Holy Spirit dictated to in- 
spired men the very words which were uttered 
by the sinful agents referred to, he dictated them 
not as his, but theirs. 

2. It has been objected, that as the inspired 

* I cannot but strongly recommend to my readers a 
work which I have found of great use to myself on this 
subject, by Robert Haldane, Esq., entitled, " The Books 
of the Old and New Testaments proved to be canonical, 
and their verbal inspiration maintained and established, 
&c." 12mo. 

Z 



254 THE TRUTH AXD EXCELLENCE 



writers were thoroughly acquainted with many 
things of which they wrote, they could not in 
such matters require any immediate afflatus 
from the Holy Spirit, and that therefore such a 
redundant influence would not have been vouch- 
safed by that infinitely wise Being who never 
lavishes his supernatural bestowments. — To this 
I reply, that the authority of a messenger must 
cease when he acts merely in his own name, 
and gives forth that only which comes within 
the range of his own personal knowledge, with- 
out reference to the express dictation of the 
power by which he is delegated. On this prin- 
ciple, a writer of Scripture recording that which 
was simply the result of his own knowledge, is a 
contradiction in terms ; inasmuch as he must 
cease to be the medium of an infallible record 
the moment that he is thrown, in a single in- 
stance, on his own unaided resources : — that is 
not Holy Scripture which is not given by in- 
spiration of God. 

3. To the full view of inspiration here con- 
tended for, it has been objected, that some things 
are introduced by the inspired writers of too 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 255 

trifling a nature to be the subject of a direct 
communication from God. As, for instance, 
when Paul says to his son Timothy — " Drink 
no longer water, but use a little wine for thy 
stomach's sake, and thine often infirmities or 
as elsewhere, when the same apostle says — 
" The cloak that I left at Troas with Carpus, 
when thou comest, bring with thee, and the 
books, but especially the parchments."* It is 
assumed, by objectors to the full inspiration of 
such texts, that they are below the standard 
of a divine communication, and that therefore 
they were the simple unaided dictates of the 
apostle's own mind. Could we see no design 
couched in them worthy of God, this would be 
a most irreverent way of dealing with any part 
of a book which gives no countenance to the 
idea of one part being more inspired than ano- 
ther. " The question is not at all whether the 
apostle Paul needed inspiration to enable him 
to give such directions, but whether it was 
without inspiration that these doctrines form a 

* 1 Tim. v. 23. 2 Tim. W. 13. 



256 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 



part of a book, all of which comes to us as the 
word of God, and inspired by him. There are 
many parts of Scripture that might have been 
written without inspiration ; but the question is, 
were the sacred writers left without inspiration 
to select what they would put into this book, 
and what they would keep out of it? If so, 
then the book is theirs, not God's. Besides, if 
it be thought absurd to suppose that there is 
any inspiration in the direction which the apostle 
gave about his cloak and Ins books, it may very 
naturally be thought that as little inspiration 
was necessary to tell us how often he had re- 
ceived forty stripes save one ; that he had fought 
with wild beasts at Ephesus; that he had un- 
dergone an endless variety of perils ; that he 
had been let down over the wall of Damascus 
in a basket, and put into the stocks at Philippi. 
Of all these, and many other similar instances, 
it may be said, that these are cases in which, 
as it would be absurd to suppose any inspiration, 
so it was unnecessary to disavow it. We shall 
thus get quit of the whole account of the suffer- 
ings of the apostles. The apostle says, that 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



257 



" all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, 
and is profitable/' &c. If there be many pas- 
sages, or any passages, in which it would be 
absurd to suppose any inspiration, or which is 
not profitable, then he is guilty of stating what 
is not true."* 

Besides this general defence of the full in- 
spiration of the passages in question, they admit 
of a more specific support. Take the first of 
them — viz., Paul's counsel to Timothy respecting 
the use of wine. Does not the exhortation in 
question stand in the midst of a group of precepts, 
the most solemn and weighty that can be con- 
ceived of ? Who, then, can prove to me, that 
the apostle was under inspiration in delivering 
them, if not in delivering it ? And was it alto- 
gether unworthy of the Holy Spirit to dictate 
to Paul such an injunction for the use of Timothy, 
when the preservation of his health, and his 
continued labours and usefulness in the church, 
might depend upon it ? Besides, does not the 
very permission to Timothy of a " little wine ' ' 



* 3Ir. Carew, as quoted by Mr. Haldane, 

z 2 



258 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

inculcate the doctrine of temperance, especially 
upon all the ministers of Jesus Christ ? 

As to the second passage, we may fairly 
assume, with Grotius and Erasmus, the poverty 
of Paul, but not surely the absence of in- 
spiration. "See," said Grotius, "the poverty 
of so great an apostle, who considered so small a 
matter, left at such a distance, to be a loss to 
him !" " Behold," said Erasmus, " the apostle's 
household furniture, a cloak to defend him from 
the rain, and a few books T ; With regard to the 
"books or parchments," unless we knew what 
they were, it would be the height of presumption 
to affirm that the request which relates to them 
was uninspired. 

4. I shall only notice one supposition more, 
viz., that the writers of Scripture sometimes 
intimate themselves that they are not speaking 
by inspiration of God. Now, before referring 
to the instances in question, I would hero take 
leave to observe, that should it even appear, 
in certain given cases, that inspired men do 
disavow the immediate dictation of the Holy 
Spirit, all that can be fairly gathered from this 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 259 

fact will be, that on all other occasions, not 
thus limited, they spake under his immediate 
guidance. In reference to certain delicacies 
belonging to the marriage compact, the apostle 
thus expresses himself in his first Epistle to the 
Corinthians* — " I speak this by permission, 
and not of command." Now who permitted 
Paul to lay down the rules referred to ? Why, 
unquestionably, the Spirit of God. What is 
meant, then ? That Paul spake by inspiration, 
but that there was no express command from 
the Lord on the subject. As at the 10th verse 
of the same chapter. — "Unto the married/ f * 
said Paul, " I command, yet not I, but the 
Lord, Let not the wife depart from her hus- 
band. 7 '" The meaning is, that upon this particular 
Christ had issued his own mandate neverthe- 
less Paul gave command by the Spirit of Christ. 
" To the rest,''' said he, " speak I, not the 
Lord.'"§ That is, the remaining counsels of the 
apostle were such as the great Master had left 



* 1 Cor. vii. 6. 
} Matt. v. 32. 



t 2 Cor. viii. 
§ 1 Cor. vii. 12, 



260 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE 

no express injunction about, but which were 
nevertheless entrusted to him by the Spirit. 
At the 25th verse of the same chapter the apostle 
has the following expression : " Now, concerning 
virgins, I have no commandment of the Lord ; 
yet I give my judgment as one that hath 
obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful.' ! 
The thought is the same here as in the former 
instances. Though no express command had 
been given by Christ, on the subject treated of, 
yet the apostle, as one of his inspired servants, 
had received that grace which qualified him for 
a full development of the divine will, in all 
those things to which the personal ministry of 
Christ had not been directed. 

In the last verse of the chapter the apostle 
adds — " And I think, also, that I have the mind 
of Christ an expression which some of the 
most eminent critics have shewn not to indicate 
an uncertain opinion, but full conviction and 
unhesitating knowledge, as in John v. 39. 

But supposing all the above passages, and 
some others which might be quoted, to be in- 
stances in which the apostle spake without the 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 261 

immediate guidance of inspiration; — a thing 
which I cannot admit for a moment, — it is clear 
that he must have acted under inspiration in 
apprising the church that the Spirit did not 
influence him in such communications ; so that 
nothing can be derived from the objection 
against the immediate and full inspiration of 
other parts of the word of God ; but on the con- 
trary, it would rather go to the conclusion, that 
nothing short of an apostolic denial of such 
inspiration can justify any man in hesitating 
about the immediate divine authority of a single 
portion of the word of God. 



CONCLUSION. 

From the whole of the preceding remarks, we 
may infer the paramount duty of entire and 
unreserved submission to the authority of God 
in the written word. Our reason, our conscience, 
our affections, are all called to surrender them- 
selves to the heavenly vision. In this ines- 
timable volume God speaks to us upon sub- 
jects of the highest interest ; and, refusing to 



262 THE TRUTH AND EXCELLENCE, ETC. 

listen to his voice, we seal our own unhappy 
doom. " Hear ye the word of the Lord/' is the 
message addressed to all who possess the sacred 
boon ; and he who by prejudice or sin excludes 
himself from the benefits of tins message, which 
reveals the only method of salvation, is charge- 
able with a degree of rashness and folly which 
eternity itself will but fully disclose. Let the 
prayer of each one who reads this little treatise 
be — " Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold 
wonderful things contained in thy law !" 



THE END. 



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